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Envy: the basis of Jew-hatred

Reader comment on item: That Failed Philadelphia "Islamic Jew-Hatred" Bus Ad
in response to reader comment: I know my 1st response was too long to be posted. This one will be a better fit for the topic & space provided

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Jun 13, 2015 at 04:43

Hi, Doc. You said,

This lays out the most salient points about the nexus between Nazism and Islamism:

  • #1 The extermination of all the world's Jews
  • #2 The wartime alliance between Arab Muslims and German Nazis
  • #3 The Muslim Brotherhood's principle role as a terrorist organization that remains the same today

Those are good points. You might have added the fact that both Hitler and today's Islamist leaders maintain their hold on power by generating and sustaining hatred and fear of the Jews; and that without that hatred unifying people, their regimes would collapse.

This begs the question, of why so much of the world is swayed so easily by Jew-hatred -- even by people who have virtually no contact with Jews, such as the Laotians. To have such widespread appeal, I can only surmise that the cause is transcendent, based on religious jealousy (the "sin of Cain"). Martin Luther, often cited as the "Father of German Antisemitism", betrays this in "The Jews and Their Lies", p. 10:

"I also boast that Japheth, Noah's firstborn son, is my true, natural ancestor and his wife... is my tru, natural ancestress; for as Moses informs us in Genesis 10, he is the progenitor of all of us Gentiles. Thus Shem, the second son of Noah, and all of his descendants have no grounds to boast over against his older brother Japheth..."

Luther was offended not by anything they had done to the German people, nor to anyone else; but by the fact that they claimed God had uniquely chosen them. This was the same envy that led the Biblical Cain to kill his brother Abel. Hitler was obviously motivated by this jealousy (and shamed by the rumor that he was part Jewish, yet he was unable to reap any benefit from this association). Muhammed, and hence his followers, were no doubt motivated by the same envy -- going back to their claim, similar to Luther's, to have been descended from an elder brother.

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