Proposals for a Jewish state

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There were several proposals for a Jewish state in the course of Jewish history between the destruction of ancient Israel and the founding of the modern State of Israel. While some of those have come into existence, others were never implemented. The Jewish national homeland usually refers to the Land of Israel.^[1] Jews and their detractors have both put forth plans for Jewish states.

Contents 1 Ararat city 2 British Guyana 3 British Uganda Program 4 Fugu plan 5 Madagascar plan 6 Other attempts of Jewish self-governance throughout history 6.1 Ancient times 6.2 Middle ages to 19th century 6.3 Modern times 7 References

[edit] Ararat city

In 1820, in a precursor to modern Zionism, Mordecai Manuel Noah tried to found a Jewish homeland at Grand Island in the Niagara River, to be called "Ararat," after Mount Ararat, the Biblical resting place of Noah's Ark. He erected a monument at the island which read "Ararat, a City of Refuge for the Jews, founded by Mordecai M. Noah in the Month of Tishri, 5586 (September, 1825) and in the Fiftieth Year of American Independence." Some have speculated whether Noah's utopian ideas may have influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter Day Saint movement in Upstate New York a few years later. In his Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews Noah proclaimed his faith that the Jews would return and rebuild their ancient homeland. Noah called on America to take the lead in this endeavor.^[2]

[edit] British Guyana

In March 1940, the issue of an alternative Jewish Homeland is raised and British Guyana discussed in this context. The British Government decides, however, that "the problem is at present too problematical to admit of the adoption of a definite policy and must be left for the decision of some future Government in years to come". ^[3]

[edit] British Uganda Program

Main article: British Uganda Program

The British Uganda Program was a plan to give a portion of British East Africa to the Jewish people as a homeland.

The offer was first made by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain to Theodore Herzl's Zionist group in 1903. He offered 5000 square miles of the Mau Plateau in what is today Kenya. The offer was a response to pogroms against the Jews in Russia, and it was hoped the area could be a refuge from persecution for the Jewish people.

The idea was brought to the World Zionist Organization's Zionist Congress at its sixth meeting in 1903 meeting in Basel. There a fierce debate ensued. The African land was described as an "ante-chamber to the Holy Land", but other groups felt that accepting the offer would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine (the historical land of Israel). Before the vote on the matter the Russian delegation stormed out in opposition. In the end the motion passed by 295 to 177 votes.

The next year a three man delegation was sent to inspect the plateau. Its high elevation gave it a temperate climate making it suitable for European settlement. However, the observers found a dangerous land filled with lions and other creatures. Moreover it was populated by a large number of Maasai who did not seem at all amenable to an influx of Europeans.

After receiving this report the Congress decided in 1905 to politely decline the British offer. Some Jews, who viewed this as a mistake, formed the Jewish Territorialist Organization with the aim of establishing a Jewish state anywhere.^[4] A few Jews did move to Kenya, but most settled in the urban centers. Some of these families remain to this day.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Fugu plan

Main article: Fugu plan

The Fugu Plan or Fugu Plot (河豚計画, Fugu keikaku^?) was a scheme created in the 1930s in Imperial Japan, centered around the idea of settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied Europe, in Japan's territories on the Asian mainland, to Japan's benefit. The Plan was first discussed in 1934, and solidified in 1938 at the Five Ministers' Conference, but the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1941, along with a number of other events, prevented its full implementation. The plotters believed that the Jews could be quite beneficial to Japan, but also quite dangerous. Therefore, the plan was named after the Japanese delicacy "fugu", a puffer-fish whose poison can kill if the dish is not prepared exactly correctly.

At its core, the Fugu Plan was a scheme to convince thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Jews to settle in the puppet state of Manchukuo (Manchuria) –or possibly Japan-occupied Shanghai–, thus gaining not only the benefit of the supposed economic prowess of the Jews but also convincing the United States, specifically American Jewry, to grant their favor and investment to Japan. The plan was based on a naive acceptance of European anti-Semitic mythology, as found for example in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

[edit] Madagascar plan

Main article: Madagascar plan

The Madagascar plan was a suggested policy of the Third Reich government of Nazi Germany to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.^[5]

Madagascar lies off the east coast of Africa

The evacuation of European Jewry to the island of Madagascar was not a new concept. Henry Hamilton Beamish, Arnold Leese, Lord Moyne, German scholar Paul de Lagarde and the British, French, and Polish governments had all contemplated the idea.^[5] Nazi Germany seized upon it, and in May 1940, in his Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East, Heinrich Himmler declared: "I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of a large emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony."

Although some discussion of this plan had been brought forward from 1938 by other well-known Nazi ideologues, such as Julius Streicher, Hermann Göring, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, it was not until June 1940 that the plan was actually set in motion. Victory in France being imminent, it was clear that all French colonies would soon come under German control, and the Madagascar Plan could become reality. It was also felt that a potential peace treaty with Great Britain, which in a few weeks' time was about to experience German aerial bombardment in the Battle of Britain and whom the Germans fully expected to capitulate as quickly as the French, would put the British navy at Germany's disposal for use in the evacuation.

[edit] Other attempts of Jewish self-governance throughout history

[edit] Ancient times

• Adiabene - an ancient kingdom in Mesopotamia with its capital at Arbil was ruled by Jewish converts during the first century.
• Anilai and Asinai - Babylonian-Jewish chieftains.
• Nehardea - the seat of the exilarch in Babylonia.
• Khaybar - a self-governed oasis in Arabia.
• Himyar - there were many Jewish kings at this region of Yemen since 390 CE when a local chieftain named Tub'a Abu Kariba As'ad formed an Empire.

[edit] Middle ages to 19th century

• The Resh Galuta or Exilarch exercised considerable authority over the Jewish community in the Persian Empire and later the Caliphate
• Khazar kingdom - during the Middle Ages Khazaria had Judaism as its official religion. Jewish scholars and refugees were actively invited to settle within Khazar territory, particularly in Tmutarakan and the Crimea.
• Makhir of Narbonne and possibly his descendents were acknowledged by the Carolingian emperors as ethnarchs of western Jewry, with their seat at Narbonne
• Council of Four Lands - the central body of Jewish authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764. Seventy delegates from local kehillot met to discuss taxation and other issues important to the Jewish community. The "four lands" were Greater Poland, Little Poland, Ruthenia and Volhynia.
• Principality of Malabar from the eighth century to 1524 the Cochin Jews had an ethnarch ruling over them.
• The Mountain Jews of remote parts of Daghestan were self-ruling for much of the medieval and early modern period.
• Jarawa Berber tribe on the Maghreb in the seventh century, believed to be Jews, and resisted arabicization under the leadership of Queen Kahina.
• Jodensavanne: an attempt to establish a safe haven for Jews in Surinam

[edit] Modern times

• In the early 20th century Cyprus and El Arish and its environs were proposed as a site for Jewish settlement by Herzl.
• Jewish Autonomous Oblast was a region created by the Soviet Union in the Russian Far East. It has been in existence from 1934 to the present.
• The Kimberley Plan was a failed plan by the Freeland League, led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg, to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in the Kimberley region in Australia before and during the Holocaust.^[6]
• Krasnaya Sloboda - The town is the primary settlement of Azerbaijan's population of Mountain Jews, who make up the population of approximately 4,000.
• Kiryas Joel, New York - a town composed largely of Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews.
• Sitka, Alaska - a plan for Jews to settle the Sitka area in Alaska, the Slattery Report, was proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes in 1939 but turned down.^[7] An alternate history of the proposal where Jews do settle in Sitka is the subject of author Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union.
• Vietnam - Vietnamese government officials in 2005, told Israeli officials of a plan discussed between Ho Chi Minh and Moshe Dayan to invite Jews to live in the country. No documentation of the offer and discussion has yet been made available. There is currently a small expatriate community of Jews in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, intermarrying with Vietnamese, with the first Bar Mitzvah in Vietnam held in 2004, in Hanoi. There are currently no synagoges in Vietnam. Though there were French Jews in the country before 1954, there is no confirmation of any synagogue in Saigon. Reported by David Lempert, researcher in Vietnam, 1998-2006 </ref>

[edit] References