IDF's use of theory as warfare

Hi, my name in Tokyo Jesus - african american college student from oakland, california, and this is my first post on these wonderful, if intimidating forums. I must say that I came here - desperate for information about the state of urban music in the UK, but I've stayed because of the gorgeous writing, and the high calibre of thought. Anyhow, I wanted to bring this article to your attention to get your thoughts about how theory is appropriated by the state to serve purposes that appear to be at cross-purposes to its original intent. In this case, how architectural theory is selectively mis-appropriated and transformed into jargon to anesthetize Israeli soldiers to the brutality of their urban warfare against a largely innocent civilian population. But perhaps my biases blind me to the full significance of how the IDF (as one instance of the state apparatus) understands and deploys theory. I haven't read many of the theorists mentioned in this article, and so I can't speak to how the IDF mis-reads Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Guy Debord. And so I would like to get thoughts about what this article has to say about the relationship between theory, politics and the state. Of more immediate concern, however, is the question of how theory can resist being mis-read in this way?

http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=1165

The Art of War


The Israeli Defence Forces have been heavily influenced by contemporary philosophy, highlighting the fact that there is considerable overlap among theoretical texts deemed essential by military academies and architectural schools by Eyal Weizman
The attack conducted by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on the city of Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier-General Aviv Kokhavi, as ‘inverse geometry’, which he explained as ‘the reorganization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions’.1 During the battle soldiers moved within the city across hundreds of metres of ‘overground tunnels’ carved out through a dense and contiguous urban structure. Although several thousand soldiers and Palestinian guerrillas were manoeuvring simultaneously in the city, they were so ‘saturated’ into the urban fabric that very few would have been visible from the air. Furthermore, they used none of the city’s streets, roads, alleys or courtyards, or any of the external doors, internal stairwells and windows, but moved horizontally through walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. This form of movement, described by the military as ‘infestation’, seeks to redefine inside as outside, and domestic interiors as thoroughfares. The IDF’s strategy of ‘walking through walls’ involves a conception of the city as not just the site but also the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid medium that is forever contingent and in flux.

Contemporary military theorists are now busy re-conceptualizing the urban domain. At stake are the underlying concepts, assumptions and principles that determine military strategies and tactics. The vast intellectual field that geographer Stephen Graham has called an international ‘shadow world’ of military urban research institutes and training centres that have been established to rethink military operations in cities could be understood as somewhat similar to the international matrix of élite architectural academies. However, according to urban theorist Simon Marvin, the military-architectural ‘shadow world’ is currently generating more intense and well-funded urban research programmes than all these university programmes put together, and is certainly aware of the avant-garde urban research conducted in architectural institutions, especially as regards Third World and African cities. There is a considerable overlap among the theoretical texts considered essential by military academies and architectural schools. Indeed, the reading lists of contemporary military institutions include works from around 1968 (with a special emphasis on the writings of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Guy Debord), as well as more contemporary writings on urbanism, psychology, cybernetics, post-colonial and post-Structuralist theory. If, as some writers claim, the space for criticality has withered away in late 20th-century capitalist culture, it seems now to have found a place to flourish in the military.

I conducted an interview with Kokhavi, commander of the Paratrooper Brigade, who at 42 is considered one of the most promising young officers of the IDF (and was the commander of the operation for the evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip).2 Like many career officers, he had taken time out from the military to earn a university degree; although he originally intended to study architecture, he ended up with a degree in philosophy from the Hebrew University. When he explained to me the principle that guided the battle in Nablus, what was interesting for me was not so much the description of the action itself as the way he conceived its articulation. He said: ‘this space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. […] The question is how do you interpret the alley? […] We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. […] I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win […] This is why that we opted for the methodology of moving through walls. . . . Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. […] I said to my troops, “Friends! […] If until now you were used to move along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!”’2 Kokhavi’s intention in the battle was to enter the city in order to kill members of the Palestinian resistance and then get out. The horrific frankness of these objectives, as recounted to me by Shimon Naveh, Kokhavi’s instructor, is part of a general Israeli policy that seeks to disrupt Palestinian resistance on political as well as military levels through targeted assassinations from both air and ground.

If you still believe, as the IDF would like you to, that moving through walls is a relatively gentle form of warfare, the following description of the sequence of events might change your mind. To begin with, soldiers assemble behind the wall and then, using explosives, drills or hammers, they break a hole large enough to pass through. Stun grenades are then sometimes thrown, or a few random shots fired into what is usually a private living-room occupied by unsuspecting civilians. When the soldiers have passed through the wall, the occupants are locked inside one of the rooms, where they are made to remain – sometimes for several days – until the operation is concluded, often without water, toilet, food or medicine. Civilians in Palestine, as in Iraq, have experienced the unexpected penetration of war into the private domain of the home as the most profound form of trauma and humiliation. A Palestinian woman identified only as Aisha, interviewed by a journalist for the Palestine Monitor, described the experience: ‘Imagine it – you’re sitting in your living-room, which you know so well; this is the room where the family watches television together after the evening meal, and suddenly that wall disappears with a deafening roar, the room fills with dust and debris, and through the wall pours one soldier after the other, screaming orders. You have no idea if they’re after you, if they’ve come to take over your home, or if your house just lies on their route to somewhere else. The children are screaming, panicking. Is it possible to even begin to imagine the horror experienced by a five-year-old child as four, six, eight, 12 soldiers, their faces painted black, sub-machine-guns pointed everywhere, antennas protruding from their backpacks, making them look like giant alien bugs, blast their way through that wall?’3

.... article continues at http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=1165

its interesting to think about the relationship between architecture, public space and war. Of course, the Israelis have thought deeply about this. Architecture in the occupied territories is nothing more than Bentham's panopticon writ large - settlements are arranged on hilltops surrounding the Palestinian villiages below. The living room in settlements must face the Palestinian villiage, such that the casual gaze is transformed into a means of survelliance, domination and control. Army bases further away train invisible sniper fire on random Palestinians who walking down the street. I remember visiting the "map room" in a restricted section of City Hall in Jerusalem. Inside, there were extremely detailed photographic maps of East Jerusalem and Palestinian villiages taked from helicoptors on a weekly basis. Palestinians report feeling castraphobic in their villiages. Of course, this is only one example of how architecture expresses, fluid-like, the slow motion war in Palestine. But the Palestinians have responded with a counter-architecture of their own: tunnels that connect houses and villiages and states. So its no suprise to see how the Israelis, once again, violently reverse public and private space by "walking through walls". But whereas the Israeli control over the Palestinians is based on the model of the panopticon, their relationship to the Lebanese is mediated simply by sheer force and a balance of terror. But in this case, a guerilla army can turn the extraordinary power of the state on its head. All they have to do is survive, while the world looks on in horror at the terrible display of military might.

It would be interesting to see how Hizballah reads and appropriates these same theoretical texts. From what I hear, since they drove the Israelis out of Lebanon, they have developed a social welfare and media model that is quite committed to liberation, assistance to the worst off, and to the creation of an educated public, who is in control of a rich culture. Given these goals, I wonder if Hizballah can read these authors more deeply and productively, and deploy them more effectively to create a public that can withstand Israeli might?

perhaps this article points to the most effective response to people who question the need for philosophy: Philosophy is important ultimately because the state always needs new ideas to create more effective means of domination. If this is true, how can philosophy respond to this understanding of itself? How much does theory know (and theorize) about who uses it and how it is being used? Is there much of a literature on this "‘shadow world’ of military urban research institutes and training centres"?