I appreciate where you are coming from on this but my comment was based on a very simple concept that can be described with your analogy; before Hitler instigated WWII he had an historic opportunity not to instigate WWII.
No matter how clear our collective future appears to us, it has not yet come to pass. It’s not appeasement to point out the error in Hitlerian or Hamas-ian logic. You may consider it futile but I don’t. Although it appears we are all marching on the path to a massive war, there are still tangible choices at each point of contention. As much as we may wish people there had not voted for violence when they voted for Hamas, they did. This means opportunities have been lost and new ones have come up…
One way to look at my commentary might be by imagining what you might have said to a German in the lead up to WWII. Of course there is the obvious, "We are going to kill you and all of your neighbors if you don't stop Hitler yourself". My way would be like this, "You’ve been wrong in the past but before we are forced to kill you and all of your neighbors for your crimes against society, your orginization has an historic opportunity to renounce violence and govern responsibly." Does this version of my comment still smell like appeasement? FYI, it’s not.