Dehumanization in the War on Gaza
Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 26 May 2025
https://doi.org/10.22059/wsps.2025.387424.1487
Sajad Minadi
Abstract Israel's radical policy in the War on Gaza is dehumanizing and absolutely contrary to international norms and standards. Dehumanization refers to the deprivation of humans and other groups of all their basic rights. This article argues that Zionist discourse has enabled Israel's radical policy through the reproduction of dehumanizing narratives. Such narratives are influenced by Western anthropological perspective, which values Western lives more highly than non-Western ones. Zionist discourse enables such radical policy for Israel by reproducing narratives such as Legitimizing Self and Delegitimizing the Other, Denial of Coevalness, Viewing the Other as an Object, Representation of a Superior Extended "We", and Belonging to a Different Place. This radical policy includes elements such as diplomatic weakness, voluntarism, disproportionality between capabilities and actions, maximalism, and reactive behavior. This policy has deviated from realist elements such as prioritizing diplomacy to secure national interests, avoiding risk-centered approaches, respecting the vital interests of others, and operating within the framework of power. Using discourse analysis methodology and examining texts reproduced by Israeli officials and leaders, this article seeks to explain Israel's dehumanizing narratives and radical policy in the War on Gaza.
Post-war Victimization in Israeli Aggression against Iran (2025) From the Perspective of Cultural Criminology
Volume 10, Issue 2, Spring 2026, Pages 659-695
https://doi.org/10.22059/wsps.2026.409406.1571
Mahdi Khaghani Esfahani
Abstract The Israeli aggression against Iran in June 2025—targeting defense infrastructure, military personnel, civilians including scientists, children, and women, as well as hospitals, schools, and national media—was not merely a military confrontation but a turning point in the collective and psychological victimization of Iranian society. The ensuing fear, urban displacement, partial economic collapse, and existential anxiety fractured Iran’s cultural and moral fabric, creating conditions for new forms of post-war violence. This study examines how collective victimization reproduces violence and breaks norms in the post-war context both at cultural and psychological levels, and explores the relationship between symbolic violence in media, political discourse, and everyday life (routine activity criminology). The central premise posits that aggression —and the enduring fear of its recurrence—erodes social cohesion, normalizes aggression, and embeds violent cultural patterns into civic life, generating a cyclical process of victimization and offending, wherein society itself perpetuates violence. From a cultural criminological perspective, this cycle reflects a normalization of deviance and a redefinition of social power through violence. Breaking it requires a shift in Iran’s criminal policy from a security-based to a cultural and restorative approach at legislative, judicial, and executive levels—prioritizing the symbolic reconstruction of trust, hope, and meaning alongside structural post-war recovery.
The central hypothesis posits that aggression —and the enduring fear of its recurrence—erodes social cohesion, normalizes aggression, and embeds violent cultural patterns into civic life, generating a cyclical process of victimization and offending wherein society itself perpetuates violence. From a cultural criminological perspective, this cycle reflects a normalization of deviance and a redefinition of social power through violence. Breaking it requires a shift in Iran’s criminal policy from a security-based to a cultural and restorative approach at legislative, judicial, and executive levels—prioritizing the symbolic reconstruction of trust, hope, and
From Empires to Systems and Back to Empires? System Paradigm in the Intellectual Traditions of Iran, China and Russia
Volume 7, Issue 4, Autumn 2023, Pages 785-807
https://doi.org/10.22059/wsps.2024.368510.1394
Oleg Pakhomov
Abstract This paper is an attempt to reconsider the legacy of universalism of traditional empires from the perspective of systems theory. In the West, the system ideas were already present in ancient Greek/Roman philosophy and developed further since the Renaissance within the domain of natural sciences (anatomy, mechanics or astronomy), whereas they did not develop as much in social sciences and particularly in politics, which lacks a holistic understanding. In the universal empires of the East (such as Iran, China and Russia) the system paradigm developed from the political life of centralized statehood. The core concept of the traditional imperial universalism was a particular understanding of “justice”, not as equality or absence of coercion, but as a certain form of social order. As the Chinese philosopher Xunzi and the Persian philosopher Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, noted, “justice” is primarily an “equilibrium”, that is a way of maintaining optimal interrelationships between different aspects of society within a single political whole. Traditional imperial universalism understood “just order” as a centralized hierarchical order. However, the current state of the systems approach and the complexity theory allows the reconsideration of the legacy of traditional universalism as the principle of totality of organizational connections and hierarchies of “systemic elements”, in the terminology of Russian philosopher, Alexander Bogdanov. It is concluded that the three Eastern thinkers share similar systematic understanding of “justice” as a hierarchically-arranged political order, coordinated on the basis of a single plan, which permits to maintain a dynamic balance.
A Comparative Study of the Principles of Fair Proceeding in Iran with Tax Litigation Patterns in the United States, Britain, France and Germany
Volume 2, Issue 3, Summer 2018, Pages 507-548
https://doi.org/10.22059/wsps.2018.69042
Hossien Norouzi, Sajjad Hushmandi
Abstract One of the most important economic topics in every country is considering tax issues as a way of increasing the government's income through attracting public confidence by observing the principles of proceeding in the tax system of the country which might likely cause a national production boom, increase economic growth rate, reduce unemployment and the fair distribution of wealth. In this regard, since the majority of taxpayers in a country pay taxes and at the same time their rights might be threatened, it is therefore necessary to establish courts and tribunals for settlement of rights and resolving hostility, and because of the close connection of individuals with the issue of tax, they may refer to these authorities more than others. Accordingly, references must be made in accordance with a fair proceeding in order to best determine the rights of the modalities, which will not be achieved except through the adoption of fair trial principles that are endorsed and supported by international legal institutions and are accepted as the principles for the implementation of fair results in the global prosecution system. Today, there are several systems of tax proceedings in different countries, each of which has weaknesses and strengths in terms of affinity and fairness of fair proceeding principles. In this paper, by examining the tax jurisdiction of Iran, the United States, Britain, Germany and France, as well as the patterns of exploitation of each of these systems and comparing the tax systems of these countries with the accepted principles of fair proceeding, the degree of proximity or the distortion of the above tax systems into the principle of the implementation of justice, which should be the ultimate goal for lawmakers, will be studied.
