Israeli military tactics weaponized Deleuzian rhizomatic theory to swarm urban camps

Evidence

Eyal Weizman has recently shown how an Israeli military think-tank counter-intuitively mobilized the rhizomatic mobilities of Deleuzian theoretical implications, putting them to work to effect domination over densely populated and architecturally impenetrable Palestinian refugee camps such as Jenin and Balata by controlling the “geometrical syntax” of those packed urban spaces. The “operational theory” at work is for the military to go underground, “to swarm” the city like insects, “walking through walls” of apartment buildings, breaking down barriers linking a kitchen in one lived building to a living room in another, and a bedroom in a third until through these “polycentric networks” lighting upon the targets of their operational opportunity, Hamas or Al Aqsa operatives. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 684

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Eyal Weizman’s ‘Hollow Land’ and the broader literature on how avant-garde/poststructural theory gets operationalized by militaries — also resonates with discussions of ‘shock and awe’ doctrine.
• SEED: Article angle: how radical anti-hierarchical philosophy (Deleuze’s rhizome) gets co-opted into domination technology — the guerrilla metaphor of the oppressed turned against them.