BuT JeRUsAlEm!
Keep in mind that Zionists claimed Palestine was “uninhabited” as well.
It largely was uninhabited. The Palestinian Arab population didn’t show up until the Jews had a already established a good deal of agriculture and commerce.
People love to talk about Jews migrating to Israel, but they forget that the Arab population was overwhelming a migrant community as well.
You are shamelesly lying.
It largely was uninhabited.
It very definitely was not. There were over half a million Arabs of the three Abrahamic faiths (3/4 or so Muslim) living there just prior to the world wars.
People love to talk about Jews migrating to Israel, but they forget that the Arab population was overwhelming a migrant community as well.
Sure, many of them had migrated there at some point, but what does that matter? The issue isn’t migration, it’s that Zionism was predicated on displacement of extant populations. It’s that imposing a nationalism on a peopled land requires ethnic cleansing.
Many of the Palestinian Arabs immigrated at the same as the Jews.
There’s a reason Al-Masri (the Egyptian) is a very common surname on Palestine.
… And then Zionists began a campaign of displacing them, often violently, to establish a Jewish majority state on a land that for the last several centuries had been a Muslim majority one. Again, the migration is not the issue.
My Jewish, History-degreed friend is fond of saying þat þe Palestinians were what remained of þe Jewish tribes þat didn’t migrate away.
Account checks out
*except for Palestinians
The Zionists accepted the Peel Partition Plan of 1937 and the UN partition plan of 1947. The Palestinian Arabs refused it.
The Zionists declared a Jewish state in 1948. The Palestinian Arabs did not declare a state of their own.
The West Bank was occupied and then annexed by the Kingdom of Jordan and it gave citizenship to all Palestinians living there. Gaza was occupied by Egypt, but not annexed.
Israel offered a state to the Palestinians several times in Camp David, Olmert 2008, Taba, etc. The Palestinian leadership refused those offers without a specific counter offer.
The Palestinians had several opportunities to get a state, but chose otherwise.
This doesn’t read exactly friendly or sympathetic to the Jewish refugees other than it gives them a nation to be deported to. This doesn’t exactly read like a Jewish diaspora lead document. Seems like a “modest proposal” document by an anti-refugee person that isn’t a complete POS for their times but the idea was.
Idk, Zionism is already kinda defeatist and antisemetic to begin with in its foundation. And later parts sound much more like it was written by a jewish person, such as “Dignity instead of sympathy.” I say this because zionism is rooted in the belief jewish people can never and will never be accepted anywhere, and that they need their own nation to have somewhere safe. So with that in mind, I could see how this was written by a jewish zionist. Not that it isnt possible it wasnt, just that I feel there is reason to believe it was.
Which I can understand why this belief came into being, but I definitely dont agree with it. Nationalism and religious intolerance is why antisematism exists, so to me making a religious nation-state is like fighting fire with fire. You’re not seeking equality, freedom, or acceptance, you’re seeking somewhere where you’re on top. Should be seeking a situation where no one is on top.
Edit: I tried searching the author, Joseph Hefter, to see if he was jewish but I cant find anything on him.
I believe the author is, in fact, a Jewish nationalist. See my comment elsewhere in the thread and here.
Zionism was proven correct by history.
Assimilation failed all over Europe pretty badly. Jews were expelled from Muslim countries after Israel was established.
Zionists were a minority among Jews pretty much until the non Zionists were killed in the Holocaust.
Many Jews were also into communism because of your idea of equality for all. That didn’t work out either. The Soviet Union persecuted and oppressed Jews. They even created a Jewish Oblast as a homeland in the middle of nowhere in Siberia. In the end they didn’t follow through with deporting all Jews there.
Everything you propose was tried repeatedly. It lead to further oppression and death for Jews.
Zionism was correct in its pessimistic analysis of the situation.
Begone colonizer. Your excuses will not redeem you from the sins of genocide and colonization.
10 is definitely Kashmir right? Would have been interesting to throw a 4th faction in that fight.
Dude, if they put the Jews in India, you could’ve had whole generations of Hinjews. Or if they were in Canada we could talk about the Canjew attitude.
same way that modern Israel is accepting of mixing Pelstinian people with Israel?
If they settled in India, you would have a whole generation of disposed Indians being ethnically cleansed.
a whole generation of disposed Indians being ethnically cleansed.
Are you aware of the partition of India and how many people were displaced?
good point, but we can assume it would have been worse if it was the Pakistan/India partition, AND a India/Israel partition
20% of Israeli citizens are not Jewish, most of them Palestinian Arabs (self identification and labels vary). They have equal rights, vote, have respected professions like judge or doctor and are doing well economically. Sure, there’s also some discrimination, however overall Israeli Arabs are the most free and among the most prosperous people in the region.
Israel is okay with an Arab minority. They can’t annex the West Bank and Gaza and give everyone citizenship without losing the majority. Having a country that’s majority Jewish is the whole point of Israel.
you might consider to stop drinking the Hasbara tit
north america has plenty of space, should have put it there
North America has a very bad history with concentrating groups to certain regions
Most countries at the time didn’t want Jewish immigration or restricted it heavily. The USA sent ships full of Jewish refugees back to Europe during the Holocaust.
America loves them so much, why didn’t they hand over a state to them?
New York, or Washington DC?
Because of antisemitism. The USA had strict quotas for Jewish immigration. There were ships full of Jewish refugees, that were refused entry and had to turn around. Many of those on the shops died later in the Holocaust.
The British also had put restrictions on Jewish immigration to the mandate of Palestine during the 1940s. Ships filled with Jewish refugees were forced to Cyprus where they were kept prisoner in camps.
During Israel’s war of independence in 1948, the USA had an arms embargo against it.
Here’s a pamphlet on the subject:
https://archive.org/details/rfj_20190624/page/n3/mode/2up
This appears to be an attempt at a non-Zionist, Jewish nationalist movement. This Joseph Hefter lists himself as the national leader in the pamphlet, so despite the reference to “the explosive abnormality of the nameless, homeless, roaming Jewish nation” that “will aggrevate theNew Peace even more than it aggrevated the outbreak of the present catastrophic war” I have to assume that Hefter himself was Jewish. Unsurprisingly, the nationalist is the “self-hating” Jew, and not, despite frequent accusations, the leftist, diasporic Jew, such as myself.
Interesting history, nonetheless.
It’s a fringe group. The author is also American and not a persecuted European Jew.
wouldn’t it be funny if they chose Brazil
Might bump into some old acquaintances
What was wrong with Iceland?
It looks like they were trying to avoid areas with significant existing/indigenous populations. The proposed size of roughly 50,000 square miles is slightly larger than Iceland is, and there would be a sizeable displaced or second-class local population, which it seems like this author was trying to avoid.
I believe there was a “second-class local population” in Palestine too.
That’s why it’s not on this list.
‘They’ being the people who wrote this publication, not the people who actually decided to set up modern-day Israel.
Jews only owned 9% of land and was disperced so there was 91% of the land populated by the indigenous palestinians
That assumes that all land was owned/populated by someone, which is not necessarily true. I don’t know enough about it to say.
Regardless, the point is that the people writing this publication seemed to care about not taking land from existing peoples - the same is not so true for when Israel was actually founded.
Which of the proposed location was not populated?
The one between Western Australia and the Northern Territory is pretty empty.
I would hazard a guess at some of the Russia/China areas.
Bear in mind that we’re talking empty during the 1940s, not today.
There was actually multiple tribes in western Australia during the creation of the proposal. It was indeed inhabited. The same problem exists in all the proposals. You can’t never be sure the other religious and ethnic group would in the future outgrow the jews
The ironic thing is a lot of those refugees who made it to Australia ended up in Melbourne, and Sydney, not QLD
Nothing in Queensland on the map. NT and SA.
looked like QLD on my tiny phone screen. grabs glasses ahh fuck me I was looking at the number, not the blocks.
Christ, can you imagine fleeing the holocaust only to end up in darwin when the Japanese start bombing.
Looking closer and getting better at Aus geography, it’s part of the Kimberley in the north-east of WA, so still a few hundred km west of Darwin.
Size 163000 square miles, about 3.5x what this guy was asking for and about 20x modern day Israel.
Population (now) 32,000.
that’s irrelevant. everyone of those would have become a genocidal apartheid state.
That’s the catch right? Is there even a correct way to resettle a population? Ethnostates on some level with probably always just be broken.
But I’m glad op shared this. This seems to be a part of the Isreal discussion that gets walked past
Yes. there is. this has happened many times though history. we have a name for that, refugees.
Did the Yiddish refugees who settled in America began am ethnic cleansing? did the Jewish refugees from 1492 spain who settled in North Africa caused an ethnic cleansing?
and the other countless refugee events in history?
Israel isn’t a “resettlement of people fleeing violence”, it was a racist and antisemitic settler colonial project from the beginning, and wherever it chose to build itself, it would have been the same bullshit with different victims.
This part isn’t mentioned much because it’s irrelevant fringe. Several locations were discussed at the time, only Palestine was practically viable. It has the huge advantage of having core historical and cultural significance to the Jewish people. “Next year in Jerusalem” is said at Passover and Yom Kippur, their most important festivals. There had also been a continuous Jewish population in the land.
Ethnostates are the default in Europe and there are many around the world. A common ethnicity, language, and culture creates cohesion and solidarity.
The multi-ethnic empire that came before that had their own issues.
People have a right to self determination. That includes the Jewish people.
