Joan Rivers is a great comedian. I just noticed a video, that has gotten a great amount of attention, in which she is interviewed at an airport and comments on the Gaza crisis in terms of an analogy. She asks us to imagine living in New York and New Jersey residents are bombing us. Should we not retaliate? "Who started?" she retorts, when asked about civilian casualties.
It is a very funny and effective video, but, if one looks at the analogy it's totally irrelevant unless the New Jersey rocket attacks are launched by people who always lived in New Jersey and New Jersey was a viable economic entity. But, the reality is that the "Jerseyites" used to live in New York and were forcibly expelled or fled in fear when the current occupants decided they wanted it for themselves. They did not settle in New Jersey willingly and never wanted to leave New York. Moreover, New Jersey is not viable as an economic entity and that is very much due to controls that
New Yorkers continue to place on New Jersey life. So, Rivers saying "Who started?" requires the answer that the New Yorkers did, in terms of the origin of the conflict and even in the current economic strangulation of the New Jersey economy.
But we don't have to go to hypotheticals about New York and New Jersey. Let's take real historical examples. When native Americans were forcibly removed from their land and moved to reservations, would they have had the right to attack, the colonial settlers who lived on the land they once occupied? Would the Zulus and Xhosa have the right to attack the Afrikaaners that forcibly displaced them? When would that right expire? What if even the original ethnic cleansing of 700,000 in the late 40s, the Nakba to Palestinians, took place in the memory of people still alive? Jews are not expected to forget the Nazi extermination of millions because it ended in 1945. On the contrary.
But, why should the Palestinians, especially since, in their case, the displacement continues to this day on the West Bank.
The tactics of Hamas in launching attacks by rocket and using tunnels to invade what is now Israel can be debated in terms of their efficacy. One can certainly question their willingness to put Palestinian civilians at risk without any hope of succeeding in a military sense. But all resistance movements place innocent parties at risk. When the Nazis occupied parts of Europe partisans would try to assassinate the invaders even after draconian civilian reprisals were meted out against townspeople. Perhaps these attacks were wrong for just that reason, but we do not condemn the partisans. We understand their dilemma...a no-win situation born of despair, when non-violent options are impossible. In the current situation, Israel has always ignored Abbas' non-violent approach and new settlements arise, more Palestinians are displaced, often by unpunished settler violence along with judicial connivance.