Who would have protected them from the various pogroms that had been going on in the region since the early 20th century? Who would have arbitrated between the Jewish militant groups who were doing that and who were retaliating and the other groups in the region? Would the UN have stepped in to protect the Jewish population in the region as well as the various other populations in the region who were in conflict? And who would have prevented outside nation states from taking a hand in ‘helping’, especially other regional powers?
It’s easy to SAY that the Jews could have just kept living there but without a state, but if you look at the actual history it really wouldn’t have been a viable solution. Conflicts and expectations had risen to the point where the status quo was no longer functional (if it ever was).
Predictably, the conversation devolved into who is “right” to be in Israel. Anyway back to the OP:
There were debates for the homeland to be in Uganda, USSR, Guyana, Tasmania, and maybe even Japan.
Although they did not work out, the fact that they were debated/discussed to me means that settling in Palestine land itself was not necessary for all Zionists.
Since the Jews built up Palestine into a 1st world country in short time, they would have done the same anywhere.
However, without the constant threat of attack it is possible their level of technology would be lesser today since war creates innovation. Or not- it is possible they could have even been more advanced without getting bombed + stabbed all the time.
It is possible that Arabs, Muslims, or some dictator would still try to liquidate them in USSR or Uganda.
Anyway, Christians believe that all nations of the world will turn against Israel, which is part of Armageddon, so…everything is going as planned!
Ditto Wyoming. I know of precisely zero Jewish people in this region. We did get our first mosque (just a pole barn, but holy shit, you’d think we were being put under Shariah law here!) recently.
This is a highly speculative history. You are free to believe it, but I am not aware of many reputable historians, who would simply declare it as definite fact. To state it in the… firm… manner that you do is a bit much.
I believe that about half (or more) of Biblical historians are religious, so it would be difficult for anyone in the field to make such a statement.
But no significant number of them would dispute these statements:
There is no archaeological record of a war for the Israelites to take over Canaan. As best we can tell, the Israelite branch of Canaanites migrated from Southern Canaan into the main region and then climbed the social ladder over time.
The OT was written during the mid-6th century. It uses language from that time period and refers to events and places that make sense from the viewpoint of a 6th century individual, but not to the archaeologic record.
The OT, in its own text, maintains that (at least some) Jews practiced polytheism at every social level up until around 600 BC (I forget the exact king last referenced as doing so and don’t feel like looking it up).
The mid-6th century timing of the writing of the OT coincides with the return to Judah the Jews who had been held in captivity in the Median, a strongly Zoroastrian territory.
The deuteronomists are believed to be formed of Babylonian captives, or their progeny.
Deuteronomy is believed to be the book found by Hilkiah - strongly implying that he was a deuteronomist.
It would coincide with Hilkiah building the temple and ‘finding’ the Torah that the OT seems to have been started to have been written.
There are many things I have read that are not popularly supported among historians. But the items which your casual reader would find the most alarming are directly stated in the OT itself. You don’t even have to go into archeology to demonstrate Jewish polytheism post-Moses.
In hindsight, the best place to put it would have been adjacent to Alsace-Lorraine in Germany. Germany lost a lot of land in the postwar settlements, and Germans were ethnically cleansed from those areas. What’s a couple more German provinces and a few more million Germans?
Of course, at the time such an idea would have been unthinkable for Jews because their existence as a nation would just have been too precarious, about as secure as Belgium. But given how Western Europe evolved after 1945 it probably would have worked out pretty well.
This is a ridiculous idea as it would have crippled the West German state industrially and agriculturally and created the economic conditions that led to the Nazi era in the first place.
Germany already lost large chunks of its land and had to receive millions of ethnic Germans expelled from other areas. The idea is that some of that land could have been used for a Jewish State instead of being given to Poland, the Soviet Union or in this case France.
I agree that who is “right” here doesn’t interest me very much, but rather what would have been the most effective for peace and quality of life.
It’s pretty clear to me the UN fucked up. History has shown us that randomly carving up borders among other people’s lands is not something that usually goes over very well - the shitstorm that Israel is in the Middle East was entirely predictable. If the Jews wanted a homeland and other countries wanted to support them, then one of those countries should have given them that land. The Jews already living in the Middle East would either have to fit in with their host countries or immigrate to the new land.
Yes many people would have been unhappy with that and their homeland wouldn’t be related to their ancestral home, but that pales in comparison to the amount of violence and death and destruction that the Israelis have been involved with. And the Jews would have gotten over it - to put it mildly, they’ve faced worse.
It was a stupid sentimental blunder that’s caused a too many lives and put the Jews themselves in a much less secure position than they otherwise would have been. Looking at it through a traditionalist Jewish perspective, I could see the argument for fighting for the homeland no matter what. But the UN should be looking at things from a geopolitical stability perspective, and for that it was a no-brainer to put the Jewish homeland anywhere else, in a place that wanted them.
it was the British who made the error. It was their imperial policy and their colonial policy double dealing. The UN only inherited by force the two faced promises of the British who probably when they made them never expected to have to give up their imperial control…
The Jews and Muslims?
You mean the Palestinians and the Jews.
Or are you dechristianizing the Christian arab palestinians, like George Habash, who were in the forefront of the opposition to the Jewish settlement, to fit your American narratives better?
George Habash was a nominal Christian, actually a Communist, which is a religion in and of itself, or at least has all the trappings of one.
But mainly I was referring to the conflict as it was referred to at the time. Palestine had few Palestinian Jews and few Palestinian Arabs prior to the 1930s. Jewish immigration brought Arab immigration. Having passports from other Arab countries did not mean they could go back to their home countries after the war. They were forced into refugee camps. They were now Palestinians whether they wanted to be or not.
Habash was a radical Leftist, yes. That does not say he was not a Christian nor that the numerous Christian - orthodox mostly - fighters with him were not christian.
That is false
That is false.
The repeating of the propaganda is very boring, the same kind of a propaganda that spread the deception about the arabs calling for the Palestinians to leave in 1948. To take the neutral source, “The overall assessment of several British reports was that the increase in the Arab population was primarily due to natural increase. These included the Hope Simpson Enquiry (1930),[49] the Passfield White Paper (1930),[50] the Peel Commission report (1937),[51] and the Survey of Palestine (1945).[52]”