درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Two parallel but contradictory trends have come to characterize the early decades of the twenty-first century.  On the one hand, the traditional principles of international law highlighted in the UN Charter, such as the principles of state sovereignty, non-intervention, and the state officials’ immunity, have become considerably weaker norms.  The dimension of moral sovereignty of governments, by contrast, has gained much traction, as more and more states tend to prioritize the protection of internal jurisdiction over the promotion of human rights. However, at the same time, the notion of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and transitional justice in practice have cast their specter over countries’ internal developments, misconduct, and human rights violations, holding them accountable  to domestic and international laws. These conflicting trajectories have come to a head during and in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings.  Charged with human rights violations, the ruling elites of Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt faced trials—both locally and internationally by the International Criminal Court. The UN Security Council authorized applying R2P to protect Libyan people and International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrants against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and Abdullah Gaddafi. In Tunisia, an absentee trial for the deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was held.  In Egypt, however, the trial of Hosni Mubarak and those associated with his regime bypassed the so-called transitional justice model, while following the all too familiar pathway to promoting stability under the guise of national reconciliation. This paper’s central thrust is that political interests of the new rulers of Egypt, most notably the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the Muslim Brotherhood, and the military-backed interim government have turned the accepted and modern notion of transitional justice process on its head, while pursuing instead an authoritarian and managed judicial process in the name of state sovereignty and national stability.  

Research on the special relationship between the United States and Israel has usually been focused on strategic aspects, whilst fewer scholars have focused on non-material dimensions of the relationship. In addition, the existing research is mostly confined to the political and decision-making realms, with very few excursions into the academic arena. The current article aims to fill this lacuna through the study of pro-Israel academic discourse in America, focusing on the specific case of the field of terrorism studies. Critical discourse analysis of pro-Israel academic texts in this field is carried out to reveal the discourse, themes and arguments used to build this ideational pillar of the special relationship and move towards a common identity between the US and Israel. The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) is used to describe the process through which a common identity is constructed. The article concludes that defining the Self, defining the Other, and defining the norms are the three main strategies employed in the studied texts to achieve this goal.