What would a Jewish "homeland" in Africa be called?

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Not so sparse that the Germans didn't resort to a series of genocides to depopulate the land and "better" it for white settlement. The "Native Problem" won't go away even in Namibia.

Namibia's got prime prospects as a settler colony, and given that it isn't nearly as politically-sensitive as the matter of a Middle Eastern Israel, it's unlikely that a Namibian Israel (which for all intents and purposes would be highly dependent upon British support) would face the same restrictions against Jewish immigration that Mandatory Palestine did.

The blacks of Namibia are also not the most homogenous bunch, tribal loyalties are more important than national ones at the point in time we're talking about, divide-and-rule would be an easy feat.

Irony of ironies: So we hear your people suffered genocide at the hands of the Germans so here's some empty land that used to belong to some people who suffered genocide at the hands of the Germans.

I didn't think of that!

Another less likely or viable, but nonetheless interesting thought is the Angolan coast. The interior which is jungle would be of no interest, but the Mediterranean-style coastline with bountiful resources could be of great interest to settlers.

The only matter would be getting enough settlers to reach critical mass and not make the Jews a tiny minority.

 

[JMT]

Simple, give them the western half of Australia, name it New Israel.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

due to previous changes to the timeline (and my own attempts to avoid convergent borders with OTL), the actual area the new state occupies is OTL southern Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and a small part of the DRC; it borders the north, south, and western shores of Lake Victoria

A white settler state in the lowlands [1] bordering Lake Victoria? I suppose you could call it Tsetsevania, with Malariaville as the capital and major ports at Anopheles City and Yellow Fever Swamp.

The Uganda Plan in OTL involved the highlands of what is now eastern Uganda and western Kenya.

(More realistically, Bavaria or East Prussia might have been possible after World War II, but I prefer the Utah plan: there's a dead sea, a temple, a desert and a River Jordan already there. The only problem is that the Mormons will keep calling the Jews "gentiles.")
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[1] In relative terms, anyway. Lake Victoria is at 1100 meters, but that's not high enough to take it out of the malarial zone. The plateau where Britain offered settlement land was at about 2400 meters.

 

[wietze]

How about the falklands, those are pretty empty.

 

[Wolfpaw]

Namibia's got prime prospects as a settler colony, and given that it isn't nearly as politically-sensitive as the matter of a Middle Eastern Israel, it's unlikely that a Namibian Israel (which for all intents and purposes would be highly dependent upon British support) would face the same restrictions against Jewish immigration that Mandatory Palestine did.

The blacks of Namibia are also not the most homogenous bunch, tribal loyalties are more important than national ones at the point in time we're talking about, divide-and-rule would be an easy feat.

Settler colonialism lasts until the invention of the AK-47 and ever after is living on borrowed time. There is also the inevitably awkward fact that the majority of these blacks being killed and oppressed and displaced by Jewish settlers are Christians (mostly Lutheran, but with some Catholics).

The only matter would be getting enough settlers to reach critical mass and not make the Jews a tiny minority.

You have to provide for these millions, and people already live on the best land and use it to pasture their cattle. Only about 1% of the land is arable and most of the country only gets about 50mm in precipitation (though things are better in the Bushveld).

 

[Color-Copycat]

Settler colonialism lasts until the invention of the AK-47 and ever after is living on borrowed time.

Why is that? I hear this point brought up a lot in various threads but it's taken for granted by so many that I've never seen an explanation. I don't doubt the validity, I'm just interested in learning the reasoning.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Settler colonialism lasts until the invention of the AK-47 and ever after is living on borrowed time. There is also the inevitably awkward fact that the majority of these blacks being killed and oppressed and displaced by Jewish settlers are Christians (mostly Lutheran, but with some Catholics).

You have to provide for these millions, and people already live on the best land and use it to pasture their cattle. Only about 1% of the land is arable and most of the country only gets about 50mm in precipitation (though things are better in the Bushveld).

Of course, even 1 percent of Namibia's land area is still more arable land than there is in all of Israel.

The Namibian population is small enough (~400,000 at the turn of the twentieth century) that if as many Jews settled there as settled in OTL Mandatory Palestine, the indigenous people would be a minority by 1940. Add wartime and postwar refugees to that, assuming that the Nazi Holocaust isn't butterflied, and Jews would be a comfortable enough majority that they wouldn't need to resort to disfranchisement or apartheid-like measures. Once the settlers are a clear demographic majority, they're much harder to dislodge, as seen in places like New Caledonia.

Another part of Africa where a sufficiently committed settler colony might have a chance is Libya, but I'm not quite sure why anyone would try to reserve it for Jews.

 

[Wolfpaw]

Why is that? I hear this point brought up a lot in various threads but it's taken for granted by so many that I've never seen an explanation. I don't doubt the validity, I'm just interested in learning the reasoning.

They are incredibly cheap, incredibly durable, and incredibly effective. They are the perfect guerrilla weapon and the Soviets were glutting the world with them.

 

[Color-Copycat]

Ok, thanks for humoring someone who was not in the know

 

[Wolfpaw]

Of course, even 1 percent of Namibia's land area is still more arable land than there is in all of Israel.

The Namibian population is small enough (~400,000 at the turn of the twentieth century) that if as many Jews settled there as settled in OTL Mandatory Palestine, the indigenous people would be a minority by 1940.

Between 1882 and 1914, a maximum of 75,000 Jews made the Aliyah to Palestine. This is already about five times the number of German, Boer, and British settlers in Namibia at the time. An additional 120 thousand Jews went to Palestine between 1914 and 1928.

Creating a Jewish state in Africa is also a logistic nightmare. First; it is easier to get from Europe to Palestine than from Europe to South West Africa. There are preexisting yishuvs in Palestine whereas Namibia offers nothing but isolated emptiness and "Hottentots." And if hundreds of thousands of Jews were willing to go to Palestine when it was still under non-Jewish rule, why would they opt for the far riskier, far more distant, even less-urbanized, far more alien place with far less Jews than Palestine.

Add wartime and postwar refugees to that, assuming that the Nazi Holocaust isn't butterflied, and Jews would be a comfortable enough majority that they wouldn't need to resort to disfranchisement or apartheid-like measures. Once the settlers are a clear demographic majority, they're much harder to dislodge, as seen in places like New Caledonia.

A good number are still more likely to go to Palestine than the Kalahari Desert.

Another part of Africa where a sufficiently committed settler colony might have a chance is Libya, but I'm not quite sure why anyone would try to reserve it for Jews.

Italy tried that and failed despite the attendant ethnic cleansing and general brutality.

 

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Creating a Jewish state in Africa is also a logistic nightmare.

Granted, thus the "if" in my population projection. It would take something on the order of the Nazi regime to get enough Jews there. During the 1930s, Jews went anywhere that would take them, even Northern Rhodesia, so if Palestine were closed and Namibia wide open, there might be a sufficient number of settlers. Then there would be a second wave of displaced persons after the war - again, if Palestine were shut tightly, the Jews might go to Namibia because there was no other choice.

Barring that, though, an immigrant stream equivalent to the Palestine yishuv is wildly optimistic.

Italy tried that and failed despite the attendant ethnic cleansing and general brutality.

There weren't enough Italians - a little over 100,000 had settled there by 1939, and there was no particular reason for more of them to go there. Jews fleeing genocide would have a stronger motivation.

 

[King Helü of Wu]

The Fugu Plan

In the Japanese Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_settlement_in_the_Japanese_Empire

But of course, Japan was not going to make space for it, China was.

 

[593jones]

Or Alaska.

Michael Chabon has already thought of this, see 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union', the premise of the story being that after the failure of the state of Israel, the Jews were given a homeland in Alaska. Good book!

 

[modelcitizen]

To follow what seems like a theme here, why not split Oklahoma between displaced Jewish folks and Native Americans... And then it gets even livelier when A Certain Kind of administration decides to "reunite" Jews in the rest of the United States with "their" intended homeland, that could be a potentially craptastic circumstance for a TL...

 

[Wolfpaw]

Mordecai Noah tried to create the Jewish state of Ararat on Grand Island, NY, in 1835.

 

[Him]

It would be called Zion. Duh

 

[lounge60]

Simply,ISRAEL,or NEW ISRAEL.

 

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

Settler colonialism lasts until the invention of the AK-47 and ever after is living on borrowed time. There is also the inevitably awkward fact that the majority of these blacks being killed and oppressed and displaced by Jewish settlers are Christians (mostly Lutheran, but with some Catholics).

You have to provide for these millions, and people already live on the best land and use it to pasture their cattle. Only about 1% of the land is arable and most of the country only gets about 50mm in precipitation (though things are better in the Bushveld).

So it'll be basically like OTL where most of the farm work is done on massive, sprawling farms and the Namibia colony gets most of its necessities from British South Africa until they become affluent enough to import the difference.

The quandary with OTL statistics is that the circumstances necessary to convince Zionist leaders that the quest for Palestine, for whatever reason, must be abandoned (Eprahim Bin Raphael at one point suggested more severe pogroms in the early 20th century, which is about as good as any, but there are certainly possibilities for PoDs at or around the actual establishment of German Southwest Africa), certainly modification of the territory to expand into the routes of the Zambezi River and the wetter parts of Angola up north would certainly benefit a potential settler colony, how to do it is another query.

Certainly there are plenty of ways to close off Palestine and get Jews to come to Namibia, though I think Jonathan Edelstein has the best idea.