Australia today after the Kimberley Plan?

NomadicSky

Banned
What if Australia had accepted the Kimberley plan??

In the alternate timeline thousands of Jews escape the holocaust and settle in Northern Australia after the war millions of survivors settle there rather than Palestine.

Is the world better off? What's Australia like today?
 
Though however convincing the plan was to create an independent nation out of the Kimberley region, I could still see the British Commonwealth and Australia seeing the plan as an encroachment into sovereignty and as such rejecting it as PM Curtin did originally.

For the sake of argument, hypothetically the plan is accepted and is as such only a resettlement/immigration plan instead of one to create a separate nation. 75000 a population may be reasonable, the Kimberley and Pilbara support about the same population nowadays. But I can't see that desert environment sustaining a few million people. WA and the rest of Australia as a whole could strain to support a few million more through intensive agriculture but that might cause more environmental impact than OTL.

Unless of course, the same minds behind the Negev Desert agriculture immigrate over here and do the same work on the Pilbara and Kimberley.

Culturally, if the plan was allowed, there would be a strong impact. After all the post-war European immigrant wave which happened predominantly during the 50's and 60's caused a strong cultural shift in Australian society. Religiously, you may have a large convert population within the local Aborigines. Also you may have more Jewish civil rights groups protesting treatment of the Aborigines, given their own Holocaust experience.

Politically, Australia could have a large Jewish representation in parliament which may impact of Middle-Eastern policy. I'm not sure if a pure Israeli political entity still exists to a large degree if the Kimberley plan goes through especially if millions of Jews end up in Australia instead as you implied. I'm sure Zionism wouldn't disappear though and the desire for a Jewish nation in the traditional lands won't as well. These will be major issues for the Kimberley Jews.

I don't know enough about the history of Palestine to judge whether the situation will be less volatile without an Israel. Perhaps the Middle-Eastern region will be better off, I'm not too sure. But the world, is a big ask, maybe so, maybe not.
 
There are too many variables to offer a definitive scenario here. To begin with, what is the legal status of this Jewish Kimberley Homeland? Is it still a part of Western Australia? Does it have some kind of autonomy albeit part of Western Australia? Does it become a Federal Territory akin to the Northern Territory? Does it become a state in its own right? Or does it become an autonomous territory of Australia, although not independent, but somewhat self-governing? I'd dare say all that has to be figured out before anything else can happen.

And then there's simply what the majority of Jews want at the end of the day. Even if this Jewish Kimberley Homeland is established, with 75 000 "colonists", what of the majority of Jews who still yearn for the establishment of Isreal in Palistine. I would dare argue that anything less simply isn't Isreal. And considering a large number of Jew had already immigrated to Palistine, I think you'll find that Isreal will still be established at some point albeit maybe later than the OTL. Consequentially the Jewish Kimberley Homeland pretty much becomes a backwater to events in Palistine anyway with a population not much bigger than the 75 000 who originally settled there.
 
BTW there was also a plan for a Jewish homeland in Tasmania that was doing the rounds at the some time as the Kimberley Plan. Linky
 
... and don't forget the Jewish Autonomous Region in the USSR and now Russia - so oddly placed that if it wasn't in OTL it wouldn't seem plausible...
 
... and don't forget the Jewish Autonomous Region in the USSR and now Russia - so oddly placed that if it wasn't in OTL it wouldn't seem plausible...

Not to mention the Fugu Plan, which was also considered by some factions in the Japanese government to import Jews from Europe to Manchuria.

Talk about your competing Zions.
 
my favorite "Alternate Zion" is Vietnam :D

Vietnamese government officials in 2005, told Israeli officials of a plan discussed between Ho Chi Minh and Moshe Dayan to invite Jews to live in the country.
i love it
 
It would make the independence war intresting....maybe ho che menh wouldint be viewed with as much paranoia by the state department and consiquintly america doesint foot the bill of the french occupation
 
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