But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.

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Source: Harijan (26 November 1938), the article 'The Jews'.

About this quote

Sympathy for one wronged group can quietly blind you to the harm you would do to another. The steadying idea is that fairness has to reach everyone at once — belonging grows from where people are born and earn their bread, so relieving one injustice by manufacturing a fresh one settles nothing.

When to use it

  • A charity shifting resources to one struggling community first checks it isn't stripping another that needs them just as much.
  • A family taking in a relative sets clear terms so the household's existing members aren't quietly pushed aside.
  • A council rehousing one group carefully weighs the rights of the residents already living on that land.