The recent recognitions of a Palestinian state and the October 10 ceasefire have been followed by a flurry of calls to “deradicalize” Palestinian society. The New York Times editorial board went so far as to compare this deradicalization project to the denazification of Germany after the Second World War. These calls have the situation backwards to the point of farce.
Mass killings of civilians were committed against Germany and Japan, and those attacks are widely seen as war crimes, most reasonable people don’t argue that the average German or Japanese worker going about their day deserved getting firebombed. There were mass atrocities but they weren’t defeated by genocide, they were defeated by a military campaign that took out any capacity they had to wage war.
Sure they were. Had the German military chosen to continue the fight through guerilla warfare à la Hamas, the Allies would have continued their genocide of Germany à la Israel. It’s the German military high command that chose to surrender instead of continuing the fight.
There actually was a German resistance movement against the Allied occupation forces. Little known about but they killed about 5.000 occupation troops. The Allies and the US in particular carried out the death penalty for anyone being caught attacking their occupation troops.