Q&A: Hamas and Nazism
Hamas and Nazism
Question
Good evening!
Many people are currently comparing Hamas to the Nazis. It seems to me that although they are extremely cruel, there is no real basis for comparing them, because:
A. The Nazis killed out of a cold intellectual ideology (Kantian-Hegelian / Nietzschean / evolutionary / Nordic), whereas the Arabs, although they also have an ideology, still, the main source of their murder stems from a cultural character (though I am not saying which is worse).
B. The Nazis were much worse because they fought against the very idea of “the good and the ethical” (in Hitler’s words, may his name be blotted out), whereas the Muslims are simply mistaken about what is ethical.
Answer
People speak from the gut. There’s no point in engaging with this kind of talk.
It seems a bit excessive to say there’s no point in discussing it. In light of the fact that the founding father of the Palestinian movement, al-Husseini, was friendly with Hitler and wanted to apply the Final Solution to the Jewish community in the Land of Israel (https://m.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-539989), it is at least worth checking whether there aren’t those who draw inspiration from that. See the Intelligence Heritage Center’s survey on the subject:
Click to access PDF_08_AS_1.pdf
The Hamas Charter: https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/Data/pdf/PDF_18894_1.pdf
Apparently, Nazi ideology is still not rooted in Hamas to the point that they would kill a Jew who converted to Islam because of racial doctrine, but it seems that those motifs are certainly not foreign to them.