WI Sir Isaac Isaacs successfully derails the Jewish State project?

For those of you not familiar with Australian history, Sir Isaac Isaacs was the first Australian-born person to be appointed as Governor-General, and the first viceroy in the British Empire of Jewish origin. In the 1940s, however, he courted controversy with the local Jewish community with his opposition to Zionism, considering it treason and disloyalty to the British Empire. WI, with some persistance, his views become mainstream and thus force the Jewish State in Palestine project to be abandoned? (One could make the POD earlier if s/he wanted to.)
 
For those of you not familiar with Australian history, Sir Isaac Isaacs was the first Australian-born person to be appointed as Governor-General, and the first viceroy in the British Empire of Jewish origin. In the 1940s, however, he courted controversy with the local Jewish community with his opposition to Zionism, considering it treason and disloyalty to the British Empire. WI, with some persistance, his views become mainstream and thus force the Jewish State in Palestine project to be abandoned? (One could make the POD earlier if s/he wanted to.)

There were plenty of influential British (and American) Jews with similar views.

But by the 1940s, the Zionist project is already in being. There are two reasons why "cancelling" the project becomes difficult:

1. The ~400,000 Jews already living in the Holy Land, speaking Hebrew, with significant pre-state institutions (the Yishuv) and even militias (the Haganah, Palmach, Etzel, and Lehi).

Can they be relocated or subordinated to a permanent international protectorate/Arab state/bin-national state? Maybe, though all of those have severe complications attached. But certainly something more than an intellectual solution is required.

2. The Jewish refugee population from Europe. I don't know when in the 40's your POD is, but post-conquest of Poland a LOT of Jews from at least Poland and Germany need somewhere to go that isn't Europe. And if any sort of Holocaust occurs - especially one as nasty as OTL's - that place will not be Europe. If it's significantly worse, then that population isn't a problem because few or none of them survive.

The abhorrence the vast majority of the survivors had for their home continent is attested by their preferring DP camps on Cyprus than returning home, and of course by the dramatic hunger strike on the Exodus. Do the US and Commonwealth throw open their doors to the emigration instead, and if so, why? OTL the bulk of the survivors flooded into Israel as soon as the British left, a tremendous material advantage to the young Jewish state.

Shortly after Israeli independence, the Jewish populations of the Islamic world departed virtually en masse to Israel. From 1948 to 1958, the Jewish population of Israel rose from 800,000 to two million, mostly through immigration.

Having the Jewish populations of Central and Eastern Europe and the Islamic worlds "just stay home" is anything but an easy proposition. Possible, maybe, but you have to change their home conditions dramatically.

My point being simply that the '40s is too late simply to erase the Jewish settlement in Palestine by solely intellectual means. Turn Jewish opinion in the better off countries, like the US and UK, against it, sure - many were in OTL - but these populations never migrated to Israel in more than dribs and drabs in any case.

A much earlier POD (perhaps before or at the 1903 WZO Basel Conference) is possible. By WWI there was already an embryonic Yishuv, although its much smaller and its success was anything but guaranteed. You'd still need to figure out what happens to the Jewish populations in Eastern Europe and the Islamic World. "They just assimilate" doesn't really cut it; the economic and political conditions would have to be such that it was plausible.

Past WWII it gets much, much thornier, as I've hopefully demonstrated.
 
Most of the expulsions of Jews from the Arab world occured in the late 40's/early 50's, and were a direct result of the Arab/Israeli conflict, which led to Arab Jews being percieved as some kind of "5th column". Contrary to popular belief, the pre-1930's Middle East wasn't particularly anti-Semetic, certainly not more so than Europe. The creation of Israel, however, poisoned relations and led the Arabs to import 19th century European anti-Semitism lock, stock, and barrel (Arab anti-Semetic literature almost always refers back to the Protocals of the Elders of Zion, Freemason/zionist conspiracies, Jewish bankers-all European inventions, never anything that originated in the Mideast prior to 1948). If Israel doesn't form, Jewish-Muslim relations will probably be significantly better than OTL, and most Arab Jews will stay put.
 

Cook

Banned
A Governor-General is not a Viceroy, particularly not an Australian Governor-General and in particular not Alfred Isaac Isaacs!


Australian Dictionary of Biography said:

Late in November (1930), in audience with the King, Scullin stood firm, the King reluctantly approved, and the announcement of Isaacs's appointment was made with a clear implication of the King's displeasure…

The style of his speaking and of his judgments, however, was often rhetorical and verbose. More objectionable was his appalling certainty, his unshakeable conviction of the rightness of his opinion and his utter inability to see merit in any other view. He was unwilling to confess error in those cases where he simply had to reverse course and retreat from a position dogmatically stated and wrong. Reading his judgments sometimes leaves a sense that a result has been achieved by a trick, by sleight of hand…
Isaacs also wrote widely on biblical and religious subjects for the Jewish press and frequently spoke at various Jewish functions. He did not observe religious practices and had taken little part in community affairs but was acutely aware of his Jewishness; his strong interest in religious doctrines and writings had probably been nurtured by his mother. In his public life he was very sensitive to anti-Semitic attacks and responded to them angrily, especially when there was any suggestion of a contradiction between Jewishness and British citizenship. Throughout his life he took immense pride in his British citizenship and its Imperial links, and insisted that Jewishness was a matter of religion and not of race or nationality…

In the early 1940s Isaacs copiously attacked 'political Zionism', as he described it, mainly in the Hebrew Standard. It is an unhappy story which, allowing for his great age, once again reveals his inflexible dogmatism and his insensitiveness towards the differing beliefs of others. When Professor Julius Stone opposed him cogently, Isaacs reacted with great anger not only to the argument but against Stone personally. He threatened a body of Melbourne Jews that if they proceeded with a public protest meeting against the implementation of British policy in Palestine, he would publicly denounce them on the ground that 'our simple duty is to our King and country in this hour of trial', and he did so. During these years of holocaust, what Isaacs did was painful and divisive; both his writings and his actions were extravagant and left a blemish on his reputation in the Jewish community which had taken such pride in the splendour of his career…

He was a master lawyer and one of the greatest judges in our Federal history, and he brought to his work and to the whole of his public life an unflagging and almost inexhaustible energy and a mind of great strength, power and range…

http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A090439b.htm

An impressive Constitutional Lawyer and Judge, but also a stubborn as hell.

 

Kharn

Banned
This might sour relations with the Christian world, especially if someone feiry and influential can paint it that way. Any lieklyhood of a mass-jewsih migration to the Holyland anyways, but accepting Arabic governance?
 
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