I think you have misread the thrust of my article - I did not compare Hamas to Nazis. At least that was not the intention - so let me be clear about the intention with which the article was written first and foremost.
The article is about how groups of people are able to talk about other groups of people as a homogenous unit. I'm not debating the positivity of Nazism, I'm not extolling the virtues of Nazis more generally, nor am I slamming Hamas - or indeed Israel. Instead, what I'm saying is that the second anyone starts talking about a large group of people, they stop looking for counter examples. They miss the story of John Rabe because they maintain the flawed position that all Nazis are evil. Some Nazis weren't - what I also pointed out is that in some cases it is really really complicated. I used Ukranian fighters as an example of that in action - and suggested the reasons for why the Baltic States and Ukraine might have a high proportion of White Supremacists is rooted in their historical interplay with Russian - whom Ukraine are now fighting and this is complicated.
What I am saying is when you swap the word 'Nazi' for the word 'jew' or indeed 'palestinian' - you completely miss the nuances and complexity. You create an us-vs-them mindset which funnels you down a simplistic lens of looking at the problem and confirmation bias.
Do I think all Palestinians are Hamas, of course not - I think there are complicated reasons why Hamas got into power, they haven't held elections since 2006, they had a civil war (of sorts) against Fatah to get there and they're the latest in a litany of missed opportunities from 1948 onwards to broker a way towards peace. Palestinian civilians are not Hamas and they do not deserve the repercussions that are happening and were always likely to happen if Hamas launched an at-scale offensive as they did a week ago.
That said, there are videos circulating of people being kidnapped, bodies in the backs of vans and other such things. I have no reason to suspect 'fake news' on the basis that a military incursion happened and civilians were shot. I might question (and indeed should question) the veracity of some of the subsequent claims, but this is true of all warzones.
So I can condemn Hamas for their military incursion and I can condemn Israel for the heavy handed response. And I do. And I suspect so do many Israelis, because (and here's the nuanced bit) they aren't a monolith. There are right win Israeli war-mongers and there are liberal lefty Israelis who will hold centrist views closer to mine. There are moderate Palestinians and there are non-moderates.
By making this a binary issue, in which there is an attempt to paint one side as 'the goodies' and one side as 'the baddies' - either by demanding evidence from one side but not the other, or not maintaining a neutral condemnation of all things criminal, we stray into the sort of thinking that the Nazis approve. Us vs Them is the main thrust of any demagogue, be that Israeli or Palestinian.
And so, I would suggest, that you stop seeking evidence to confirm your existing bias and instead seek evidence to dismiss it. That is how best to maintain curious compassion that doesn't mean you're immediately jumping to support war crimes at source.
TLDR; Hamas aren't Nazis. Nazi modes of thought thrive in situations where people turn off their compassion and curiosity.
