Comment by breppp

Haganah was a paramilitary organization formed after a few rather violent massacres of the Jewish population in the 1920s, climaxing with the Hebron massacre in 1929 which included horrors similar to October 7, hence why it's name in Hebrew is "Defense". Except for a short stint of a few months of something in between guerilla warfare and terror attacks against the British, it was mainly a military organization foremost, tasked with defense of the Jewish population from Palestinian attacks until the 1948 war

Irgun and Lehi were both offshoots which can be categorized as terror organizations, however they were very small, with a few hundred members and never reached the size or level of support of any Palestinian organization

While the Haganah formed most of the IDF leadership, the new country civilian leadership was based on the Jewish Agency which predated the Haganah and had completely civilian leadership.

There are many other differences between Hamas and these organizations, but in general this is an invalid comparison