Lack Of Charity

The last of the main causes of friction between the Jews and ourselves is lack of charity, and that in the simplest form of refusing to go half way to meet the Jew, and of refusing to put ourselves in the shoes of the Jew so as to understand his position in our society and his attitude towards it. It is a universal fault just as common in those who daily associate with, live off, and fawn upon Jews as in those who keep aloof from them. It never seems to occur to anyone on our side who has to deal with the Jewish problem, to make the imaginative effort required. And yet we have the parallel ready to our hands. The Jew feels among us, only with far greater intensity, what we feel when we are resident in a foreign country—a sense of exile, a sense of irritation against alien things, merely because they are alien; a great desire for companionship and for understanding, yet a great indifference to the fate of those among whom he finds himself; an added attachment, not, indeed, to his territorial home, for he has none, but to his nation. If we could perpetually bear in mind that parallel, the friction on our side would be greatly modified.

— Hilaire Belloc, The Jews