"Stop insulting me, stop using handwavium to deride every single piece of thoroughly-researched evidence I've presented, and actually try reading the OP."
I'm not trying to insult you. I think your ideas and the logic you have based them on are completely wrong, but I am certainly not trying to insult you or anyone else.
But my criticisms are certainly not "handwavium" either. Instead, I would say that your ideas are based on handwavium - ghost towns waiting to be populated, mass deportations of Japanese, the analogy of Rajasthan as a reason why the Kimberley could house a much bigger population. All of those concepts, which you introduced to support your hypothesis, are incorrect and inaccurate. I do not attack you but I certainly disagree with your hypothesis.
Please explain how they are. Why isn't Rajasthan a fitting climatological and geographic analogy for the Kimberley? Why is there so much imbalance between the official Australian figures and the official Japanese figures, regarding the number of Japanese people who were interned in the Australian camps and deported back to Japan after WW2? Australia simply asserts that they only interned and expelled 'less than 1,000' Japanese (and doesn't even attempt to round the figure off to the nearest hundred). The Japanese themselves assert that, from the 1870s until World War II, more than a hundred thousand Japanese voyaged to Australia to settle there- and while they themselves admit that only 1,141 Japanese Australians were interned during WW2, they also assert that most Japanese Australian residents had already taken the decision to return to Japan themselves in the late 30's and early 40's- according to them, the vast majority of Japanese Australians didn't wait around to be interned or deported, they left before it got to that stage.
The prevailing estimate among most professional scholars is that about 4,300 Japanese Australians were expelled from Australia; and I decided to go with the professional estimate, rather than either of the more extreme official figures.
"into an alien (even though it's not that different from the climate back in Palestine)"
You are wrong again. The Kimberley is dramatically different to Palestine in ecology, flora, fauna, weather, population and infrastructure.
Of course it is. But in comparison to anywhere in the USA, France, Canada or the UK? The difference isn't that remarkable at all.
"They'd have been incapable of developing the various water-saving technologies, including drip irrigation, which would've been needed to cultivate the region, wouldn't they?"
You can't dump people into the Kimberley and expect them to develop a viable agricultural system within the short period of time before their food and other supplies run out. Israel was able to develop arid farming agriculture over a period of decades because of extensive experience and a long history of living in Palestine, plus a resident society that dated back thousands of years. In the Kimberley there would be none of that, no history of living in the region, no resident support infrastructure of towns and cities already there, no experience of farming under those conditions (and they aren't remotely like those in Palestine). It would be a disaster.
Israel's early population was overwhelmingly comprised of first-generation immigrants. And the majority of those weren't actually holocaust survivors- they were part of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Islamic countries. Israel didn't develop its arid farming agriculture over a period of decades because of the Israelis' extensive experience and long history of living in Palestine- they did it because of many Israelis' extensive experience and long history of living in even harsher regions, such as the Maghreb, Iraq, Egypt and Yemen. The resident society that dated back thousands of years was a factor, but a relatively negligible one. And another thing to remember- this is a post-1900 thread. What's to stop them from just doing what the Israelis do today, importing the majority of their food from elsewhere? It's not like their Australian and Indonesian neighbours are going to place a trade embargo on them to try and prevent them from doing so (like the Arabs did with the Israelis), is it?
Now you might want to calm down as you sound a little hysterical. I'm not attacking you, but your suggestions are bad ones. Very bad, unsupported by either the facts or even common sense. If you think I am using "handwavium" then you should be able to rectify that by adding some figures and specifics to your earlier statements. Such as,
a) which are these ghost towns, cities, ports and villages that you have, several times, said were available to take in Jewish settlers after the "mass deportations" of Japanese?
b) how many "mass deportees" were there according to yourself? If your hypothesis is that there were vacant facilities available to take in Jewish emigres, and you then cited 25-50,000 as a potential initial intake, then can you point out where the appropriate empty housing, shops and other facilities were?
c) if large scale farming of the Kimberley was such an obvious possibility to you, can you explain why it hasn't happened IOTL? Despite the long term interest in such an idea and the resources put into it?
A) What do you consider constitutes a 'ghost town'? If a population loss of 50% or more counts, then Broome was itself a ghost town at this stage in its history. True, it isn't the region which was offered to Steinberg's Freeland League by the Australians, (which was basically the same region which would later be developed by the Australians themselves, in the Ord River Irrigation Scheme) so in retrospect, it isn't really all that relevant.
B) As I've just admitted, looking into the Kimberley Plan in more detail, it isn't really that relevant, given that there wasn't actually a significant Japanese Australian population in the area of the Kimberley which was offered to the Freeland League. But as for the potential initial influx of 25,000>50,000 settlers- that was simply the figure for the number of would-be Jewish illegal immigrants to the Palestinian territories being imprisoned in the Cyprus internment camps,
at any given time, by the British during WW2, and for the next few years after its conclusion, who were sent there after having been intercepted along the way. If the Kimberley Plan is implemented, with the full support of the Commonwealth, in 1944, then why would the British wait around until after the Arab-Israeli War, a full five years later IOTL? More likely, they'd simply start deporting several of them to the Jewish Freeland in the Kimberley instead.
Or at the very least, they'd offer those prisoners in the camps a choice. They would all be free to accept the invite to migrate to the Jewish Freeland, and to settle the Ord River region of the Kimberley, at any time, with free passage and transport to get there. Or, they could prolong their imprisonment in the Cyprus camps- with poor sanitation, over-crowding, lack of privacy, and an acute shortage of clean water, in living conditions which in the opinion of the local joint director, Morris Laub, were inferior to those of the German POW's housed in adjacent camps- until the backlog was cleared (three or five years' time). Which option would you choose?
C) Because it has. The Ord River Irrigation Area Project began in the early 1960s, and while it hasn't been deemed to be remarkably successful, one has to stop and wonder why. IOTL, the scheme initially failed because of the difficulties growing crops, which were primarily due to attacks from pests. For instance, the original plan was to use the water of the Ord River Dam (OTL's Lake Argyle) to irrigate rice, as an export crop to China. However, these plans were scuttled due to waterfowl, particularly magpie geese, eating the rice shoots quicker than they could be planted. Several other farms concentrated on growing cotton (again, as a commerical export crop); however, they also developed pest problems. In the early 1970s, large amounts of pesticides were applied to the crops, but one specific species of local caterpillar developed a resistance to the over-used pesticides. The resulting low crop yields, combined with a drop in world cotton prices, led to suspension of the commercial cotton industry in the region. Even IOTL though, the irrigated areas now successfully produce a variety of fruits and vegetables- primarily sugarcane, with melons, mangoes and safflowers also grown in large numbers, and the most recent and lucrative crop currently being sandalwood (all of which are still crops which require relatively intensive irrigation). Today, the total agricultural crop output of the Ord River Irrigation Area is actually greater than that of Israel. Fact.
But why does it have to play out the same way in an ATL? Even if they did choose to grow the same crops- that species of caterpillar,
Helicoverpa armigera, developing its resistance to the pesticides IOTL can be counted as a freak occurrence, one which could almost certainly never be repeated in an ATL with a POD twenty-five years earlier. Those problems with the geese decimating the rice harvests could have been eliminated entirely if more labor had been available to watch over the fields- namely if there had been more settlers in the region, the crop would have succeeded. But of course, in the 1940's, which crops will the Jewish settlers be most inclined to grow? Money-spinning cash-crops, for commercial exports? Or will they focus on growing their traditional field crops first, such as wheat and sorghum- more drought tolerant crops, which are more suited to the region's climate?
And BTW, for the record, I was, and still am prefectly calm and composed. I was merely satirising your nonsensical argument that any Jews attempting to settle the Kimberley would spontaneously roll over and die, which struck me as being somewhat insulting, perhaps even verging on anti-semitism.