This may explain the fascination of the military with the spatial and organizational models and modes of operation advanced by theorists such as Deleuze and Guattari. Indeed, as far as the military is concerned, urban warfare is the ultimate Postmodern form of conflict. Belief in a logically structured and single-track battle-plan is lost in the face of the complexity and ambiguity of the urban reality. Civilians become combatants, and combatants become civilians. Identity can be changed as quickly as gender can be feigned: the transformation of women into fighting men can occur at the speed that it takes an undercover `Arabized' Israeli soldier or a camouflaged Palestinian fighter to pull a machine-gun out from under a dress. For a Palestinian fighter caught up in this battle, Israelis seem `to be everywhere: behind, on the sides, on the right and on the left. How can you fight that way?'9

Critical theory has become crucial for Nave's teaching and training. He explained: `we employ critical theory primarily in order to critique the military institution itself - its fixed and heavy conceptual foundations. Theory is important for us in order to articulate the gap between the existing paradigm and where we want to go. Without theory we could not make sense of the different events that happen around us and that would otherwise seem disconnected. [...] At present the Institute has a tremendous impact on the military; [it has] become a subversive node within it. By training several high-ranking officers we filled the system [IDF] with subversive agents [...] who ask questions; [...] some of the top brass are not embarrassed to talk about Deleuze or [Bernard] Tschumi.'10 I asked him, `Why Tschumi?' He replied: `The idea of disjunction embodied in Tschumi's book Architecture and Disjunction (1994) became relevant for us [...] Tschumi had another approach to epistemology; he wanted to break with single-perspective knowledge and centralized thinking. He saw the world through a variety of different social practices, from a constantly shifting point of view. [Tschumi] created a new grammar; he formed the ideas that compose our thinking.11 I then asked him, why not Derrida and Deconstruction? He answered, `Derrida may be a little too opaque for our crowd. We share more with architects; we combine theory and practice. We can read, but we know as well how to build and destroy, and sometimes kill.'12

In addition to these theoretical positions, Naveh references such canonical elements of urban theory as the Situationist practices of dérive (a method of drifting through a city based on what the Situationists referred to as `psycho-geography') and détournement (the adaptation of abandoned buildings for purposes other than those they were designed to perform). These ideas were, of course, conceived by Guy Debord and other members of the Situationist International to challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city and break down distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, use and function, replacing private space with a `borderless' public surface. References to the work of Georges Bataille, either directly or as cited in the writings of Tschumi, also speak of a desire to attack architecture and to dismantle the rigid rationalism of a postwar order, to escape `the architectural strait-jacket' and to liberate repressed human desires.
In no uncertain terms, education in the humanities - often believed to be the most powerful weapon against imperialism - is being appropriated as a powerful vehicle for imperialism. The military's use of theory is, of course, nothing new - a long line extends all the way from Marcus Aurelius to General Patton.

An impressive application of postmodernism...

I knew all kinds of academic fields could find military applications, but critical theory never came to my mind, though...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères