Israel Advocacy in the Academic Field: The Case of Terrorism Studies

Research on the special relationship between the United States and Israel hasusually been focused on strategic aspects, whilst fewer scholars have focusedon non-material dimensions of the relationship. In addition, the existingresearch is mostly confined to the political and decision-making realms, withvery few excursions into the academic arena. The current article aims to fillthis lacuna through the study of pro-Israel academic discourse in America,focusing on the specific case of the field of terrorism studies. Criticaldiscourse analysis of pro-Israel academic texts in this field is carried out toreveal the discourse, themes and arguments used to build this ideational pillarof the special relationship and move towards a common identity between theUS and Israel. The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) is used todescribe the process through which a common identity is constructed. Thearticle concludes that defining the Self, defining the Other, and defining thenorms are the three main strategies employed in the studied texts to achievethis goal.