Existence Of Israel With No Holocaust/A Much Smaller Holocaust

Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in this time period had ideologically Socialist governments (at least in theory). Getting them onboard the Freedom (tm) Train would require, at the least, CIA backed coups, which is expensive.

The arabs weren't part of the Warsaw Pact and could've been detached from the USSR had the US made significant concessions, like forcing Israel out of the occupied territories and offering to provide replacement arms. Essentially this is what happened in the years after '73.

With an oil-rich but relatively weak Saudi Arabia and a friendly Iran, the US doesn't need anything from countries that are demonstrably militarily incompetent. Israel was a cheaper, easier, and more immediate option.

But it would've been wise to keep the Soviets from maintaining a foothold or two in the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt may not have been militarily very efficacious but at least it was usable. Israel may have been strong but it was a pariah unable to help police the region. When Bush assembled a coalition to drive Saddam from Kuwait Egypt and Syria could send troops but not Israel, no way.

The Sinai is useful as a buffer. Israel considered Egypt its greatest threat in the early years, and controlling Sinai adds 250km to the distance between Egypt and Tel Aviv (let alone Ashkelon). If we still get a large Arab population in Gaza, controlling Sinai allows Israel to isolate them from potential Egyptian rabble-rousing and arms. Plus the Sinai has a little oil and gas (not much, but enough to make Israel significantly less dependent on imports for energy). Plus it now puts the British Canal Zone as a buffer between Israel and Egypt, a la 1956's goal.

The problem is that keeping the buffer would've meant constant and ever escalating war. Israel had a much harder time when it held the Sinai--1967-73--than when it proceeded to give it back, and none--at least with Egypt--in the many years since full return in '82.
Btw holding the Sinai buffer wasn't entirely advantageous militarily. As Ismail noted prior to the '73 war, it meant longer lines of communication for Israel, giving an Egyptian crossing more time to become established and ready.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
American Jews supported the pre-war Zionist efforts for settlement in Palestine through various means. Yes, the Zionist idea of the Jews needing their own state got a boost from the Holocaust, however this this scenario you have still had a massive resurgence in nasty antisemitism in Europe, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of murders. Jews wishing to leave the countries that have resumed crapping on them big time, to say nothing of where they were killed are still being kept out of everywhere they might go to make things better - a situation very much unlike what existed up to the early 1920s. Absent the Holocaust antisemitism in the USA has not come to be equated with support for the really stuff the Nazis did, so to the extent there was some slacking in postwar antisemitism in the 1940s, that has not happened which will make Zionism more attractive to US Jews as a philosophy and even an action.

Would U.S. Jews have enough influence in this TL to actually have the U.S. government support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, though? After all, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine is certainly going to piss off a lot of Arabs and Muslims!

After WWII OTL the USA did support the partition and recognized Israel. They then instituted an arms embargo which was fairly seriously enforced on "all parties". Of course since the Arab nations could get arms elsewhere, this was not a favor to Israel. When, early on in the 1948 war, things looked grim for Israel the USA lent no support other than "good luck". Until the 1967 war US support for Israel was quite limited.

True; indeed, wasn't JFK extremely hostile to Israel's pursuit of nuclear weapons?
 
Would U.S. Jews have enough influence in this TL to actually have the U.S. government support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, though? After all, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine is certainly going to piss off a lot of Arabs and Muslims!

For sound geopolitical reasons, George Marshall opposed US recognition of Israel, but Truman favored it, probably for domestic political reasons.

True; indeed, wasn't JFK extremely hostile to Israel's pursuit of nuclear weapons?

He opposed it but he and LBJ were willing to sell arms like HAWKs and Skyhawks.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
For sound geopolitical reasons, George Marshall opposed US recognition of Israel, but Truman favored it, probably for domestic political reasons.

Who would win this debate in the U.S. in either a no-Holocaust scenario or in a much-smaller-Holocaust scenario, though?

He opposed it but he and LBJ were willing to sell arms like HAWKs and Skyhawks.

Were he and LBJ also willing to sell such arms to Arab countries, though?

Also, for the record, as far as I know, unlike JFK, LBJ was willing to turn a blind eye to Israel's nuclear weapons program--thus allowing Israel to successfully build nuclear weapons by the end of the 1960s.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Basically, if people such as George Marshall win this debate in the U.S. in a no-Holocaust/much-smaller-Holocaust scenario, Israel might have some serious problems. After all, if Israel's existence won't be recognized by the international community and won't have a major power supporting it (if the U.S. is hostile to Israel, France might likewise be hostile to Israel; after all, AFAIK France only agreed to vote for the 1947 UN Palestine Partition Plan after significant U.S. pressure), then Israel might end up losing a future war to Arab countries even if it still wins its war of independence in the late 1940s (due to the inability of various Arab armies to cooperate and coordinate their moves, et cetera).
 
The arabs weren't part of the Warsaw Pact and could've been detached from the USSR had the US made significant concessions, like forcing Israel out of the occupied territories and offering to provide replacement arms. Essentially this is what happened in the years after '73.

I apologize if I somehow implied that Arabs were in the Warsaw Pact; obviously they weren't but most were Soviet aligned.

And after 1973, there was all of one Arab country that turned to the US - Egypt. And they did that in the context of the peace treaty with Israel. (and massive arms bribes, as you say)

Syria remained steadfastly Soviet-aligned, though Iraq did pussy-foot a little bit, but that was with the US fully backing Israel. So we're left with Syria, but considering Iraq and Egypt, it's hard for me to believe that Israel would be their main blocking point.

And even without US support for Israel (which, we'll recall, comes 10-20 years after everyone but Jordan is Soviet-aligned), all of the Arab republics have ideological reasons to go East in the first place, in the form of hating the Western system as their previous colonial oppressors.

It's also very odd to invoke the US forcing Israel out of the occupied territories as any kind of argument. None of the other Arab countries cared at all about the Occupied Territories. Jordan and Egypt both refused them when offered back!

You are right that dumping Israel is necessary to get the Arabs to defect, but it's far from sufficient.

But it would've been wise to keep the Soviets from maintaining a foothold or two in the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt may not have been militarily very efficacious but at least it was usable. Israel may have been strong but it was a pariah unable to help police the region. When Bush assembled a coalition to drive Saddam from Kuwait Egypt and Syria could send troops but not Israel, no way.

This is anachronistic. By the time Bush invaded Iraq, the two-world system had fallen.

The problem is that keeping the buffer would've meant constant and ever escalating war. Israel had a much harder time when it held the Sinai--1967-73--than when it proceeded to give it back, and none--at least with Egypt--in the many years since full return in '82.
Btw holding the Sinai buffer wasn't entirely advantageous militarily. As Ismail noted prior to the '73 war, it meant longer lines of communication for Israel, giving an Egyptian crossing more time to become established and ready.

I have absolutely no idea where you're getting this. The period of time when Israel held the Sinai was not all that much worse than before. Yes, there was the War of Attrition, but that was fading off by 1970, and you're forgetting the near constant fedayeen raids out of Gaza OTL until 1967. I'm also not sure that Egypt would ever have signed the peace treaty if Israel hadn't taken the Sinai in the first place, but that's pure speculation.

Would U.S. Jews have enough influence in this TL to actually have the U.S. government support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, though? After all, the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine is certainly going to piss off a lot of Arabs and Muslims!

I don't understand how this is any different from OTL at all.

Jewish support was sort of secondary to the US supporting the creating of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The idea had been formally floated at Versailles and everyone sort of agreed that it was a good idea without doing anything about it. The '48 partition was a result of Britain wanting nothing more to do with a small, problematic colony and withdrawing. They wanted to hand the Mandate over to the US, the US said, no, let's hand it to the UN. The UN was trying to be nice and set a good precedent for national conflicts (and maybe, just maybe, feeling a little bad about the Holocaust, especially the million or so Jewish citizens that France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc. didn't want to let back into their countries). Jewish support inside the US had almost nothing to do with it.

Basically, if people such as George Marshall win this debate in the U.S. in a no-Holocaust/much-smaller-Holocaust scenario, Israel might have some serious problems. After all, if Israel's existence won't be recognized by the international community and won't have a major power supporting it (if the U.S. is hostile to Israel, France might likewise be hostile to Israel; after all, AFAIK France only agreed to vote for the 1947 UN Palestine Partition Plan after significant U.S. pressure), then Israel might end up losing a future war to Arab countries even if it still wins its war of independence in the late 1940s (due to the inability of various Arab armies to cooperate and coordinate their moves, et cetera).

I still argue that Partition Plan and Israel becoming a country have very little to do with each other, but I've already said why in earlier posts in this thread.
 
Assume that the USA blocks the UN partition plan, the UK pulls out washing its hands, and as a result the Arabs over-run the Jewish parts of Palestine and render it Judenfrei (or close to it), with a reverse exodus to the DP camps on Cyprus. There continue to be Jewish communities of various size in Arab countries, and probably their conditions worsen with confiscations, ghettos etc. Perhaps some small Jewish communities continue in Palestine in places like Safed. BTW will there be an independent Palestine or will the neighboring countries divvy the place up.

So now no Israel to"poison" relations between the Arabs and the west, between the Arabs and the USA. Will the Egyptians not throw out the monarchy, put in Nasser (or someone similar) and nationalize the canal? Will Qaddafi, or someone else not overthrow Idris? The series of coups that brought Saddam to power not happen? Was Israel the reason the USA worked with the British in Iran to keep the Shah in power in the early 50s, was it the existence of Israel that propelled Khomeini to power? The Muslim Brotherhood and its philosophy was there long before Israel, and was Wahhabism - and the Saudis who have been US "friendly" have been at the forefront of establishing radicalizing madrassas around the Muslim world. While absent Israel that particular burr under the saddle won't be there, but the fundamentalist reaction to any "modernizing/liberalizing" in the Arab world will still happen. It is the Arab governments these folks want to overthrow first.

The idea that if only the "west" had prevented Israel from existing or thrown them under the bus from day one that everything in the Middle East would be "OK" is simply wrong.
 
Who would win this debate in the U.S. in either a no-Holocaust scenario or in a much-smaller-Holocaust scenario, though?

US jews probably would've voted for the candidate favoring a jewish state, holocaust or no holocaust.

Were he and LBJ also willing to sell such arms to Arab countries, though?

Only pro-western ones like Jordan, which got tanks etc.
 
And after 1973, there was all of one Arab country that turned to the US - Egypt. And they did that in the context of the peace treaty with Israel. (and massive arms bribes, as you say)

Syria remained steadfastly Soviet-aligned,

One important difference was that it was easier to get Israel out of Sinai than Golan, via negotiation. The US wasn't politically willing or able to force Israel out of all the territories the arabs wanted back, or to arm the arabs against Israel if need be.

And even without US support for Israel (which, we'll recall, comes 10-20 years after everyone but Jordan is Soviet-aligned), all of the Arab republics have ideological reasons to go East in the first place, in the form of hating the Western system as their previous colonial oppressors.

But the US was perceived as an exception, notably in 1956, when it got the French and British out of Egypt. The US was better able to provide aid, and it could've outbid the soviets had it been willing and able.

It's also very odd to invoke the US forcing Israel out of the occupied territories as any kind of argument. None of the other Arab countries cared at all about the Occupied Territories. Jordan and Egypt both refused them when offered back!

Egypt and Syria most certainly wanted them back, but without making political concessions to Israel, initially.

This is anachronistic. By the time Bush invaded Iraq, the two-world system had fallen.

Of course, but weaning the arabs away from Moscow still would've helped back in the Cold war. I also pointed out that in 1991 and even now, Israel, for all its might, can't be used as a regional policeman. It's pariah and likely to remain one in part because of the situation on the West Bank.


I have absolutely no idea where you're getting this. The period of time when Israel held the Sinai was not all that much worse than before. Yes, there was the War of Attrition, but that was fading off by 1970,

No, not entirely. There were occasional clashes involving jets and SAMs and tensions were quite high for the whole period from 1970-73. The period from 1967-73, when Israel held Sinai and had yet to begin its withdrawal, was much worse than the period from 1956-67.

and you're forgetting the near constant fedayeen raids out of Gaza OTL until 1967.

Na, the gaza raids ended between '56 and '67 when there was a UN force there.


I'm also not sure that Egypt would ever have signed the peace treaty if Israel hadn't taken the Sinai in the first place, but that's pure speculation.

It had to sign a treaty to get Sinai back but not taking it in the first place might've meant de facto peace, perhaps indefinitely. Even in '67 Nasser had no intention of actually attacking, and the Israelis knew this, as Rabin admitted later.

Jewish support was sort of secondary to the US supporting the creating of a Jewish state in Palestine.

But US support, then and now, mirrored domestic politics or jewish influence.
 
Maybe the question should've been, would Israel have survived for long without the holocaust? Just like American jews who, no matter how gung ho they are for Israel, they remain here European jews would've preferred safer, more comfortable lives where they were than live a spartan life in the Mideast. With a significantly smaller population, and without the holocaust as a propaganda weapon to drum up aid and support, Israel might not have held out very long against adversaries heavily armed by the Soviets. Even if they still could fight their enemies to a draw on the battlefield, the psychological toll of a precarious existence would've caused too many to leave ultimately leading to collapse. So, ironically enough, no Adolf no Israel. :)

Europe was the main source of immigrants until the Arabs chased out the Sephardi communities.Given the rampant antisemitism couched in Volk blood and soil terms of the fascist parties and the anticlerical antisemitism of the socialist/communist movements, I suspect many would leave.Since emigration to the west was not an option (see SAN Remo conference), most would go to a nascent Israel if able. we might see a trend of second sons going to Israel just in case the family has to flee (similar to Hong Kong Chinese just prior to the mainland takeover). furthermore, Hitler was a product of his time.Read the blood lands. Massive ethic murder was the tactic of the day all across Eastern Europe.no doubt the Jews would have emigrated to Israel if they could.
 
Europe was the main source of immigrants until the Arabs chased out the Sephardi communities.Given the rampant antisemitism couched in Volk blood and soil terms of the fascist parties and the anticlerical antisemitism of the socialist/communist movements, I suspect many would leave.Since emigration to the west was not an option (see SAN Remo conference), most would go to a nascent Israel if able. we might see a trend of second sons going to Israel just in case the family has to flee (similar to Hong Kong Chinese just prior to the mainland takeover). furthermore, Hitler was a product of his time.Read the blood lands. Massive ethic murder was the tactic of the day all across Eastern Europe.no doubt the Jews would have emigrated to Israel if they could.


But the jews had put up with abuse for centuries without leaving. Europe had after all, relatively high living standards, and they couldn't count on better treatment in the Mideast. I think it took the holocaust to really clinch the zionist case for a lot of them.
 
The idea that if only the "west" had prevented Israel from existing or thrown them under the bus from day one that everything in the Middle East would be "OK" is simply wrong.

To me it seems one should look deeper, the roots go into the Ottoman Empire and how it broke, how the Allies, obviously most especially the British and French partitioned the "Levant." As I understand it, the Three Pashas began the notion of Holy War against the "West", Germans and Austrians excluded of course, and took the path of genocide to solidify the Islamic glue to both bind and reinvigorate the OE to glorious reconquest of the world. It appears the Jewish population was set to be cleansed the same as the Greek, Armenian, Christian, non-muslim, etc., populations. The seeds of hate and genocide were sown then and sadly infected to the West. Assuming Europe does not fall into that same cycle and we have no holocaust, I might assume the Zionists are balanced against the Yiddish populace more inclined to assimilation and less enthusiastic about creating Israel. With that as the foundation in both Europe and the USA, assuming that Jewish peoples are subject to the usual sleights and discrimination one sees stretching back to antiquity, then the Jewish emigration into the Levant will be a trickle of idealists and perhaps a cream of opportunists. If the UK especially can build a moderate state, hopefully inclusive of Lebanon, the Alawite and Druze, forming a Kingdom akin to Jordan but not ruled by pure Islamic law or Arab culture than those tribes might more easily co-exist with Jews centered around the historic holy land. Tensions and challenges galore but there is a non-Arab, more secular inclined populace that had possibility to avoid falling into the Jihad culture that rose out of Wahbist Arabia and gained traction in the post-war paradigm of "nation" building and destruction of especially British imperial power across the Middle East. Long term one might see the Jews becoming very much a middle class that builds inside a state where they are a minority but not the only minority, a more diverse state under a liberal King could see a very different "Jordan" pulling the peoples in the region south of Turkey in a very different direction.
 
But the jews had put up with abuse for centuries without leaving. Europe had after all, relatively high living standards, and they couldn't count on better treatment in the Mideast. I think it took the holocaust to really clinch the zionist case for a lot of them.
In the period from 1880-1930, about half a third or more of Jews in Europe left for the New World. This migration was cut off by WWII, more or less, though the Depression didn't help.

Assimilated Jews in France, Germany, the Netherlands, etc. might stay, as might many in Hungary (which is sort of a border region, assimilation-wise), but the poorer Jews in Lithuania, Romania, and of course Poland, will continue leaving. With the US closed and Israel open, many might choose Israel over Latin America and/or Canada.
 
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Do you have a source that it was that high?

I can use as a proximal source The Great Departure by Tara Zahra. I just checked, the actual number is more like ~35-40%. It's hard to pin down precisely, of course, because Jews in Europe tended to have a very high birthrate (at least in the Pale), while those that left tended to have much lower birthrates, so the European population grew much faster than the emigrant population, which makes it hard to estimate precisely when you consider that the process happened over the course of 2 generations.

Sorry for the exaggeration :/
 

CaliGuy

Banned
I can use as a proximal source The Great Departure by Tara Zahra. I just checked, the actual number is more like ~35-40%. It's hard to pin down precisely, of course, because Jews in Europe tended to have a very high birthrate (at least in the Pale), while those that left tended to have much lower birthrates, so the European population grew much faster than the emigrant population, which makes it hard to estimate precisely when you consider that the process happened over the course of 2 generations.

Sorry for the exaggeration :/
Thanks for this clarification! :)

Also, Yeah, I thought that 50% is a little high considering that, to my knowledge, "only" about 2 million Jews emigrated from Russia between 1880 and 1930; thus, if one adds countries such as Hungary, Romania, et cetera, my guess might be a cumulative total of something like 3 million Jewish emigrants out of a grand total of 8+ million Jews.
 
It is true the Jews have a long history of being crapped on. Also, throughout their time in Europe there are numerous instances of Jews moving from one place to another in large numbers, sometimes because of expulsions, sometimes because they were invited because the host country wanted their skills (Poland being an example of the latter). ITTL you have have an INCREASE in antisemitic laws, rolling back 100 years of advancement in Italy, Hungary, Romania absent Nazi occupation. Of course Germany/Austria things were bad, as they were in Czechoslovakia and Poland (and any parts of the USSR occupied). Vichy France applied antisemitic laws in unoccupied France, and in occupied France Vichy cooperated in deportations. The point of this is that in Eastern Europe, Germany, and even in parts of western Europe it was not just the Nazis who jumped on the antisemitic bandwagon. Will Jewish property be returned to survivors? Given that in most countries, including western Europe, this was difficult for survivors and impossible for heirs...

Potentially attractive countries in Europe won't allow much immigration, the USA won't, and I expect the USA will continue the policy of "discouraging" Latin American countries from allowing Jews in - the State Department these countries would be used as way stations to get in the USA. Maybe South Africa and Australia will be willing to accept more "white" immigrants, but not sure. With Israel to go to....
 
With the US closed and Israel open, many might choose Israel over Latin America and/or Canada.

Maybe "some" instead of "many." Even Latin America probably had better economic prospects than palestine. In addition there had been considerable violence involving jews and arabs in the '30s, and a prospect of more, so if the goal was to live a peaceful, productive life...
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Stalin's antisemitism predates Israel. Plus, it's not like Israel told the Soviets to take a hike; rather, the Soviets decided (probably correctly) that it was better politics to turn to the Arabs, rich in oil and angry against the West. This meant no Israel for the Soviets.

Stalin's antisemitism is a curious thing though. It might have been real - God knows that Russia before the Revolution was a hotbed of antisemitism (it's the birthplace of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for one, plus the Canton Schools, the Pogroms...

However, a disproportionate amount of the Soviet leadership was Jewish in the early years of the Union (more or less before Stalin started cracking down on them), and antisemitism gave Stalin a powerful tool to use to rally people at all levels against his enemies and rivals. Even if he didn't actually hate Jews himself, antisemitism was very useful for him.

OK; understood about everything here.

There are a lot of countries that have formed since 1947. Very few of them were created by UN resolution.

Yes, but their creation generally had to have a sense of international legitimacy to them; for instance, the various ex-USSR countries became internationally recognized due to them having a legal (albeit nominal before the early 1990s) right of secession from the USSR.

The UN would have been happy to recognize Israel post facto (or not, I guess, if the Arabs were able to rally enough resistance to the idea).

You mean just like the UN recognized Somaliland in our TL (sarcasm)?

I'm not sure how much the "legitimacy of the UN resolution" has actually helped,

Well, how much are countries such as Somaliland hurt by a lack of international recognition in our TL?

especially considering that none of the Powers would touch Israel until the British and French needed them for some skullduggery,

Israel was admitted into the UN in 1949, no?

and a significant number of countries still don't have relations with them.

Yes--almost all of them being Arab and Muslim countries on whom Israel wouldn't rely too much in any case.
 
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