e manners in which these major publications present the incident in question reflect these predilections and, perhaps more importantly, reinforce them.
As Melani McAlister explains in Epic Encounters: Culture, Media and US Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000, the US began to develop its present-day attitudes towards Israel in the late 1960s. IsraelÆs astounding-yet-decisive victory in the Six Day War prompted a Vietnam-weary US to perceive in the Israeli state ôa political model for thinking about military power and a practical example of effectiveness in the use of that powerö (McAlister 157). Further, Christian fundamentalists had seized upon end-time scenarios predicted in the bible, citing that an Israeli homeland was an essential component of and precursor to the war of Armageddon and ultimately, the Second Coming of Christ (McAlister 158, 165). American evangelicals thus adopted a special interest in the fate of the nation of Israel, folding the fate of the Jewish state into that of the larger Christian world (McAlister 176). These
...