The work of Eyal Weizman
Posted May 31, 05:14 PM by Tom Sparks
In a modern urban war who is a civilian and who is an enemy combatant / terrorist / soldier?
Israel is on the bleeding edge of military theory and practice and continues to practice as we see this week in Palestine’s Gaza Strip. Eyal Weizman is an architect based in Tel Aviv and London. He has done extensive studies of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and has connected architecture, urban planning, politics and military theory in his published work. Weizman’s book Hollow Land explores the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and shows how architecture and urban planning have been used as methods of control and domination.
The natural and built features function as the weapons and ammunition with which the conflict is waged. link
In the film Moving Through Walls , Mr. Weizman explores the way s the Israeli Defense Forces are rethinking urban space. In a companion piece Walking Through Walls Weizman writes:
The maneuver conducted by units of the Israeli military during the attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002 was described by its commander, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, as “inverse geometry,” which he explained as the re-organization of the urban syntax by means of a series of micro-tactical actions. During the attack, soldiers moved within the city across hundred-meter-long “over-ground-tunnels” carved out through a dense and contiguous urban fabric. Although several thousand soldiers and hundreds of Palestinian guerrilla fighters were maneuvering simultaneously in the city, they were saturated within its fabric to the degree that most would not have been visible from an aerial perspective at any given moment. Furthermore, soldiers did not often use the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city, as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, but rather moved horizontally through party walls, and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings and floors. ←link
With the current hostilities in Gaza, we can expect that lessons learned in the West Bank will be applied again Gaza. The walls that the soldiers walk through will be in apartment buildings, homes and businesses of Palestinian people, not army or terrorists fortifications. The lives of the people, the space they inhabit will be the battle ground.
Israel is intent on the destruction of Hamas as a fighting force and a political entity. We can expect Israel to use other well know tools, like “targeted assassinations”. On Jan. 1st Israel dropped a 2000 pound bomb on the home of a Hamas leader killing him and his 18 family members. [link] . The destruction of most or all government buildings is expected as well, making Hamas’s ability to govern impossible.
Martin Van Crevald a noted Israeli Military Historian and theorist has stated:
They [Israeli soldiers] are very brave people… they are idealists… they want to serve their country and they want to prove themselves. The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel… if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. ← link
Scroundrels and idiots, they seem to be in great supply.
Some resources and sources:
- Lethal Theory by Eyal Weizman
- Walking Through Walls by Eyal Weizman
- Moving Through Walls
- Martin van Creveld Web Site
- Moving Through Walls YouTube
- Eyal Weizman on Amazon
on Torture & Homo Sacer
Posted May 31, 09:59 AM by Tom Sparks
Op Ed piece Knight of the Living Dead published 3/24/07 in the New York Times, Slavoj Zizek cuts to the chase on how far we have fallen as a nation, our moral compass has broken, we have retreated to the dark past of the middle ages when the value torture was argued in the public sphere. The U.S. has created a gray world protected by the law but not regulated by these laws.
The case of Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is well know by now by most of us, a terrible terrorist who confessed (under the torture of waterboarding) to many heinous crimes including planning the 9/11 attack. Mr. Mohammed has become what Zizek calls a homo sacer a person who is excluded from all civil rights, he is now outside legality.
Now after nearly three years of incarceration at Guatanamo Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has submitted a guilty plea to the military tribunal along with his co-conspirators. The U.S system is in a disarray of it’s own making. The people of the U.. want justice, but justice has been badly served in this case, it will hard if not impossible. Due to the illegal nature of the Bush administration detention policies.
Reading this essay by Slavoj Zizek is like turning on a light. Please read it, we seem to be stumbling in the dark.
Something a little lighter and entertaining, ZIZEK’S review of Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron
Previously pulished in part at FieldNotes 1/5/8