Alternate Jewish Homeland

[Orioes]

Alright kids, it's time to play pin the zion on the Eurasia...

Well it is one of the major sports of the AH.Com Olympics. Right up there with the 100m Gay/Israel/Abortion flaming tightrope and proving your own educational system is the worst.

It is Pre-1900 but what about some POD involving Joseph Nasi? A Jewish Duchy of the Archipelago or Ottoman client Israel?

 

[I Blame Communism]

I'd like to see this carried out by a pre-WWI, alternate WWI (different alliances), or alternate (smaller-scale, no Hitler) WWII Germany (I can't support Germany winning WWI, being a Frenchman). Before Naziism, Germany was actually one of the kindest European states towards the Jews. Because Yiddish was so close to German, the Germans tried to recruit Jews into their ranks in the census to increase the number of German-language schools in the Austro-Hungarian empire, as part of the struggle over language control between German-speakers, Czech-speakers, Polish-speakers, Magyar-speakers, and others. If Germany expands eastward and Jews bring honor upon themselves by serving German nationalist interests in the struggle, they might be given an annexed area of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, or the Balkans to call their own, nominally as part of the German empire but with a decent amount of autonomy.

Maybe a conflict in the Balkans expands and Germany intervenes, or Germany takes over a collapsing Austria-Hungary during WWI and redraws the borders to be more friendly to Sudaten-Germans. Or, a German nationalist government without the antisemitic tendencies (much more plausible than one might think, nationalism often had to do with language and culture rather than race) tries to annex the Sudaten territories, gets into a limited war, and redraws the map in favor of German speakers, with a Jewish homeland somewhere. The conflict never expands so the changes are not wiped out when Germany is defeated.

Wierd as it sounds, this was seriously considered, if not by the German government, then certainly by some Zionists. Well, if you trust wikipedia, that is.

 

[Provencal]

Ha... If we learned nothing else from World Wars I and II, it is that "buffer states" are better known as "speedbump states" at best, and "roadkill states" more commonly. A Jewish state in Poland would have fared about as well in the World Wars as, well... Poland.

 

[Michel Van]

this is a Wacky Idea
by Aerospace Engineer Scott Lowther
but i like this "Neuvo Israel"

with a nice WI: Roosevelt and Camacho offert the surviving Jews
this land as new begin...

http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=1566

 

[Grimm Reaper]

Orioes, don't be silly. We established beyond dispute long ago that my own system of edumicashun was the worst of all.

 

[CanadianGoose]

How about Israel is made in what is OTL Kaliningrad? The Germans were being forced out anyway, and a few million could easily fit in East Prussia. The only problem is Stalin.

You need more antisemitic (or just imperialistic) British Empire for that. Decision about East Prussia isn't likely to be announced before early 1946 and go into full swing before 1947. At this point Britons showed signs that they're not going to go into all-out war against Jewish presense in Palestine and any sane person would pick democratic independent Palestine over Stalin's puppet territory. So, make British to adopt tough imperial stance after 1945 (as in "we're holding to our Empire, we're not getting rid of Mandate and we're not allowing Jewish immigration no matter what") and it might fly.

I don't think the Russians would want to negate the area's use as a port and military base by flooding it with dispossessed.

I don't understand how would setting up Jewish puppet statelet affect Russian access to port and military base. And, being squeezed between Poland and USSR (or should I say "between Poland and Lithuania"), this statelet isn't going to try something stupid.

If Israel had gone kaput (forgive the word play) in the '48 war, I could totally see them trying to restart somewhere else, and just deciding that now wasn't the time for Zion to be reborn on the earth.

I don't think that collapse of Israel in 1948 would lead to Zionist project being restated somewhere. I could see more push toward "national cultural autonomy" along what Bund proposed, but not actually an attempt to create a country.

 

[lounge60]

What about New Zeland?
Imagine that NZ was donated to Jews from Queen Victoria..