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 State of Israel[1] or the Land of Israel,[2] depending on political and religious beliefs. Jews and their supporters, as well as their detractors and anti-Semites have put forth plans for Jewish states.
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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.[3]
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 5,000 square miles (13,000 km2) 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]
On March 28, 1928, the Presidium of the General Executive Committee of the USSR passed the decree "On the attaching for Komzet of free territory near the Amur River in the Far East for settlement of the working Jews." The decree meant that there was "a possibility of establishment of a Jewish administrative territorial unit on the territory of the called region".[5]
On August 20, 1930, the General Executive Committee of the Russian Soviet Republic (RSFSR) accepted the decree "On formation of the Birobidzhan national region in the structure of the Far Eastern Territory". The State Planning Committee considered the Birobidzhan national region as a separate economic unit. In 1932, the first scheduled figures of the region development were considered and authorized.[5]
On May 7, 1934, the Presidium accepted the decree on its transformation in the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Russian Republic. In 1938, with formation of the Khabarovsk Territory, the Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR) was included in its structure.[5]
According to Joseph Stalin's national policy, each of the national groups that formed the Soviet Union would receive a territory in which to pursue cultural autonomy in a socialist framework. In that sense, it was also a response to two supposed threats to the Soviet state: Judaism, which ran counter to official state policy of atheism; and Zionism, the creation of the modern State of Israel, which countered Soviet views of nationalism. The idea was to create a new "Soviet Zion", where a proletarian Jewish culture could be developed. Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and a new socialist literature and arts would replace religion as the primary expression of culture.
Stalin's theory on the National Question held that a group could only be a nation if it had a territory, and since there was no Jewish territory, per se, the Jews were not a nation and did not have national rights. Jewish Communists argued that the way to solve this ideological dilemma was to create a Jewish territory, hence the ideological motivation for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Politically, it was also considered desirable to create a Soviet Jewish homeland as an ideological alternative to Zionism and to the theory put forward by Socialist Zionists such as Ber Borochov that the Jewish Question could be resolved by creating a Jewish territory in Palestine. Thus Birobidzhan was important for propaganda purposes as an argument against Zionism which was a rival ideology to Marxism among left-wing Jews.
Another important goal of the Birobidzhan project was to increase settlement in the remote Soviet Far East, especially along the vulnerable border with China. In 1928, there was virtually no settlement in the area, while Jews had deep roots in the western half of the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia proper. In fact, there had initially been proposals to create a Jewish Soviet Republic in the Crimea or in part of Ukraine but these were rejected because of fears of antagonizing non-Jews in those regions.
The geography and climate of Birobidzhan were harsh, the landscape largely swampland, and any new settlers would have to build their lives from scratch. Some have even claimed that Stalin was also motivated by anti-Semitism in selecting Birobidzhan; that he wanted to keep the Jews as far away from the centers of power as possible. On the other hand, Ukrainians and Crimeans were reluctant to have a Jewish national home carved out of their territory, even though most Soviet Jews lived there, and there were very few alternative territories without rival national claims to them.
By the 1930s, a massive propaganda campaign was underway to induce more Jewish settlers to move there. Some methods used the standard Soviet propaganda tools of the era, and included posters and Yiddish-language novels describing a socialist utopia there. Other methods bordered on the bizarre. In one instance, leaflets promoting Birobidzhan were dropped from an airplane over a Jewish neighborhood in Belarus. In another instance, a government-produced Yiddish film called Seekers of Happiness told the story of a Jewish family that fled the Depression in the United States to make a new life for itself in Birobidzhan.
As the Jewish population grew, so did the impact of Yiddish culture on the region. A Yiddish newspaper, the Birobidzhaner Shtern (Russian: Биробиджанер Штерн, Yiddish: ביראָבידזשאַנער שטערן, "Star of Birobidzhan"), was established; a theater troupe was created; and streets being built in the new city were named after prominent Yiddish authors such as Sholom Aleichem and Y. L. Peretz. The Yiddish language was deliberately bolstered as a basis for efforts to secularize the Jewish population and, despite the general curtailment of this action as described immediately below, the Birobidzhaner Shtern continues to publish a section in Yiddish.
One Jewish settlement in the JAO is Valdgeym.[1] It was founded in 1928 and was the first collective farm established in the oblast.[2] In 1980, it opened a Yiddish school.[3] Another village in the JAO with a history of Jewish settlement is Amurzet, established just after the turn of the 20th century.[4] [5][6] From 1929 to 1939, Amurzet was the center of Jewish settlement south of Birobidzhan.[7] Today, Jewish community members hold Kabalat Shabbat ceremonies and gatherings that feature songs in Yiddish, Jewish cuisine, and broad information presenting historical facts on Jewish culture. Many descendants of the founders of Amurzet have left their native village. Those who remained, especially those having relatives in Israel, are learning about the traditions and roots of the Jewish people.[8] The population of Amurzet, as estimated in late 2006, is 5,213. [9] Another early Jewish settlement in the JAO is Smidovich.
The Birobidzhan experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges. Jewish leaders were arrested and executed, and Yiddish schools were shut down. Shortly after this, World War II brought to an abrupt end concerted efforts to bring Jews east.
There was a slight revival in the Birobidzhan idea after the war as a potential home for Jewish refugees. During that time, the Jewish population of the region peaked at almost one-third of the total. But efforts in this direction ended, with the Doctors' plot, the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state, and Stalin's second wave of purges shortly before his death. Again the Jewish leadership was arrested and efforts were made to stamp out Yiddish culture—even the Judaica collection in the local library was burned. In the ensuing years, the idea of an autonomous Jewish region in the Soviet Union was all but forgotten.
Some scholars, such as Louis Rapoport, Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov, assert that Stalin had devised a plan to deport all of the Jews of the Soviet Union to Birobidzhan much as he had internally deported other national minorities such as the Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans, forcing them to move thousands of miles from their homes. The Doctors' Plot may have been the first element of this plan. If so, the plan was aborted by Stalin's death on March 5, 1953.
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and new liberal emigration policies, most of the remaining Jewish population left for Germany and Israel. In 1991, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was transferred from under the jurisdiction of Khabarovsk Krai to the jurisdiction of the Federation, but by then most of the Jews had left and the remaining Jews now constituted less than 2% of the local population. Nevertheless, Yiddish is again taught in the schools, a Yiddish radio station is in operation, and as noted above, the Birobidzhaner Shtern includes a section in Yiddish.
Despite there being little evidence to suggest that the Japanese had ever contemplated a Jewish state or a Jewish autonomous region,[6] Rabbi Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz published a book called 'The Fugu Plan' in 1979. In this partly fictionalized book, Tokayer & Swartz gave the name the Fugu Plan or Fugu Plot (河豚計画 Fugu keikaku) to memorandums written in the 1930s Imperial Japan proposing settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied Europe in Japanese territories. Tokayer and Swartz claim that the plan, which was viewed by its proponents as risky but potentially rewarding for Japan, was named after the Japanese word for puffer-fish, a delicacy which can be fatally poisonous if incorrectly prepared.[7]
Tokayer and Swartz base their claim on statements made by Captain Koreshige Inuzuka. They alleged that such a plan was first discussed in 1934 and then solidified in 1938, supported by notables such as Inuzuka, Ishiguro Shiro and Norihiro Yasue;[8] however, the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1941 and other events prevented its full implementation. The memorandums were not called The Fugu Plan.
Ben-Ami Shillony, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, confirms that the statements upon which Tokayer and Swartz based their claim were taken out of context, and that the translation with which they worked was flawed. Shillony's view is further supported by Kiyoko Inuzuka .[9] In 'The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders', he questioned whether the Japanese ever contemplated establishing a Jewish state or a Jewish autonomous region.[10][11][12]
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.[13]
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.[13] 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 be realized. It was also felt that a potential peace treaty with Great Britain would put the British navy at Germany's disposal for use in the evacuation. Britain was about to experience German aerial bombardment in a few weeks' time in the Battle of Britain, and Germany expected Britain to capitulate as quickly as the French did.
In March 1940, the issue of an alternative Jewish Homeland was raised and British Guiana (now Guyana) was discussed in this context. But the British Government decided 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". [14]
As a prevailing strain of anti-Zionism puts forth an opposition to Israel's existence in Southwest Asia, a smaller wing of anti-Zionism focuses upon the circumstances of the resulting region-wide conflict which followed Israel's Jewish settlement and 1948 declaration of independence; this ideological wing proposes the hypothetical resettlement of the entire Jewish Israeli population in another isolated region of the world outside Southwest Asia (and outside the reach of most major Western power centers and populations). This position of alternative homeland settlement in opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state may have influenced the Stalin-era creation of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the less-hospitable, highly-isolated Eastern coast of Siberia.
More extreme anti-Zionist canards also often call for the resettlement of the Israeli Jewish population in an area of North America, particularly within United States borders, in which larger concentrations of Jewish-American demographics exist (i.e., New York, Florida, California, etc.).
Polish anti-Semites named Judeopolonia[19][20] an alleged plot for a Jewish-dominated Poland. A similar theory claiming Jewish involvement in the rise of Communism in Poland is named Żydokomuna.
The League of East European States proposed by the Zionist Max Bodenheimer in 1902 has been linked to Judeopolonia by modern anti-Semitic authors[19][20] since Jews, Germans and Poles would counterbalance among themselves.
The Argentine extreme right has denounced the Andinia Plan to establish a Jewish state in parts of Argentina[21]. While Herzl had also evaluated Argentina in The Jewish State, the Zionist organizations however had dismissed it as a Jewish homeland in the early 20th century.
A number of Palestinian and other Arabic-speaking individuals bearing antipathy towards the existence of Ashkenazi Jews in Israel view the migration of Jews to the region historically known as Israel as an unfortunate outcome for Arabic-speaking peoples, and that the most optimal resolution of the conflict is the forced migration of Ashkenazi Jews back to Central European countries such as Germany and Poland, the sites of historic Jewish communities prior to the Holocaust initiated in both countries. Individuals such as Azzam Tamimi and Helen Thomas have become known for such statements.
In an English-language Palestinian-Israeli debate on Iranian TV, which aired on Press TV on January 14, 2008, Tamimi debated Israeli lecturer Yossi Mekelberg. In response to Mekelberg stating that "We need justice for everyone, and I will tell you where...", Tamimi stated that: "Justice? You go back to Germany. That's justice. You turn Germany into your state, not Palestine. Why should Palestine be a Jewish state? Why?"[22]
In January, 2006, Tamimi wrote that creation of the state of Israel "was a solution to a European problem and the Palestinians are under no obligation to be the scapegoats for Europe's failure to recognise the Jews as human beings entitled to inalienable rights. Hamas, like all Palestinians, refuses to be made to pay for the criminals who perpetrated the Holocaust. However, Israel is a reality and that is why Hamas is willing to deal with that reality in a manner that is compatible with its principles."[23]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) provided the following quotation from an article published by Tamimi in 1998: "If the Westerners as a whole – and the Germans in particular – are immersed in feelings of guilt because of what they have perpetrated against the Jews, isn't it a just thing that they will act together to expiate for their sins by granting the Jews a national homeland in central Europe, for instance, within one of the German states? Or, why will not the U.S., the Zionist father through adoption, grant [the Jews] one out of its more than fifty states..?"[24][25]
Helen Thomas, a Lebanese-American journalist and correspondent for United Press International, in 2010 after being asked by Rabbi David Nesenoff on camera for comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, suggested that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Poland, Germany "And America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who have lived there for centuries?"[26]. The resulting uproar led to an initial apology and her resignation from UPI, but she defended her comments in other venues afterward.