Levy, however, does not believe an indifferent Israeli public will be receptive to Livni's warning:
"As long as Israelis don't pay a price for the occupation, or at least don't make the connection between cause and effect, they have no incentive to bring it to an end.
"And why should the average resident of Tel Aviv be bothered by what is happening in the West Bank city of Jenin or Rafah in the Gaza Strip? Those places are far away and not particularly interesting. As long as the arrogance and self-victimization continue among the Chosen People, the most chosen in the world, always the only victim, the world's explicit stance won't change a thing."
Turning the light of realism on that indifferent public, Levy adds:
"It's anti-Semitism, we say. The whole world's against us and we are not the ones responsible for its attitude toward us. ... Most Israeli public opinion is divorced from reality -- the reality in the territories and abroad."
Israeli's right-wing media, like its counterparts in the U.S., promotes the public's "divorce from reality" by calling actions supporting Palestinian justice as anti-semitic attacks on Jews.
To the Times of Israel, opposition to Israeli self-absorbed policies are seen as ongoing battles in a theater of war.
This recent Times story was explicit: From the war in Iraq to the battle against Israel boycotters. In that piece, war strategy is transferred to a political strategy, designed to defend Israel from criticism.
"Can an idea honed on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan prove effective in defending against assaults on Israel's legitimacy in North America? David Dabscheck, deputy managing director of the Israel Action Network [IAN], thinks so.
"In 2005, Palestinian civil society issued a call for a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights. A truly global movement against Israeli Apartheid is rapidly emerging in response to this call.
"The idea, in the words of General Stanley McChrystal -- commander of the US Joint Special Operations Command -- that "it takes a network to defeat a network" played a central role in his concept for fighting insurgents in the Middle East ...
"'It became clear to me and to many others that, to defeat a networked enemy, we had to become a network ourselves,' McChrystal recalled in Foreign Policy, "We had to figure out a way to retain our ... levels of knowledge, speed, precision, and unity of effort that only a network could provide.'"
The two-year old Israel Action Network figured it needed to form a network to combat its own enemy network.
"'We realized we were facing a different type of challenge,' reflected Dabscheck. 'We faced a decentralized challenge originating from different groups. If this is a network challenge,' he said, echoing McChrystal, 'it takes a network to defeat.'"
Dabscheck is wrong, of course. There is no war between networks. The boycott strategy has won. It is the only pressure that works. Gideon Levy explains:
"A boycott is the least of all evils, and it could produce historic benefits. It is the least violent of the options and the one least likely to result in bloodshed. It would be painful like the others, but the others would be worse.
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