A Jewish comrade takes Eugene V. Debs to task for his naive pronouncements supporting immigration to Palestine just months after the Balfour Declaration.

‘Shall Socialists Support Restoration of Jewish State?’ by J.R. Booth from Truth (Duluth). Vol. 2 No. 23. June 7, 1918.

Since the publication in Truth of the statement by Com. Debs on the restoration of a Jewish state, most of those favoring the idea have become jubilant and some of those opposed to it have become stage frivolous to discuss it because Debs said so. Isn’t it strange, that some of us must be believers a life time, if not in God or religion, then in Marx or Debs, etc., without any conviction.

Debs has a big heart. He wants to see every human being happy. Then why not make the Jewish people happy with a state in Palestine?

But Debs has never studied nor investigated thoroughly how far practical this proposal is. He hasn’t written a single article to prove this ideal. While those in the Zionist. movement and the antis have spent a great part of their lives to get the facts on this problem, a good many of those being active in this movement, after taking inventory of what had been accomplished in all the years of existence of so many different organizations to father the plan of establishing a Jewish home, came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of energy had been wasted without getting any results. The Jewish population in Palestine now is not in millions, but in thousands. Some of them live in colonies under very miserable conditions and most of them are supported through charitable institutions in other countries. Palestine, our “native land”, is not developed enough in comparison with other countries in any way to attract the immigration of the Jewish people, after they have been away two thousand years, and they would always be in the minority there even when their “state” was established. And in order not to be mistreated by the majority, most likely they would have to have the “protection” of the English rule.

To dream of a state after seeing the tragedy of the small states of different nationalities, the way they have been crushed out of existence in this war, is more than ridiculous.

It is not for the class conscious Socialists to give up their time to work for such a nationalistic movement, which brings harmony between the worker and the capitalist of the same nationality. While they are working hand in hand for the same ideal, national feeling takes the place of the class feeling. The workers of the different nationalities must not give their energy for their different particular petty nationalistic dreams when all their energy is required to fight their common enemy, capitalism. To the working-class in general, all the countries of the world belong, because they have developed them. And only capitalists, who do not create any value, are foreigners. And in order to unite ourselves to do away with the system, that upholds them, we cannot be pro-Jew or pro-Christian, but pro-letarian.

Yours,

J. R. Booth.

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the IWW leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-IWW raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor JO Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the CP.

Access to full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1918-06-07/ed-1/seq-1