The Un-Promised Land: A Jewish State in Australia.

SinghKing

Banned
Australia's carrying capacity is about 15 million people. Unless by some divine intervention, I do not think they can live in they area you mentioned. Well, they can live, but only for a short time. They would live longer as occupiers in Palestine than in Western Oz.

Here's a summary of the Kimberley's climate:

The Kimberley has a tropical monsoon climate. The region receives about 90% of its rainfall during the short wet season, from November to April, when cyclones are common (especially around Broome) and the rivers flood. The annual rainfall is highest in the northwest, where Kalumburu and the Mitchell Plateau average 1,270 mm (50 in) per year, and lowest in the southeast, where it is around 520 mm (20 in). In the dry season, from May to October, south easterly breezes bring sunny days and cool nights.

The Kimberley is one of the hottest parts of Australia, with the average annual mean temperature around 27 °C (81 °F), and with mean maximum temperatures almost always above 30 °C (86 °F), even in July. The hottest part of the year is November before the rains break, when temperatures frequently reach above 37 °C (99 °F) on the coast and well over 40 °C (104 °F) inland. Mean minimum temperatures in July range from around 12 °C (54 °F) in the south to 16 °C (61 °F) along the coast, whilst in November and December they are generally around 26 °C (79 °F).[11] Record high temperatures range from around 47 °C (117 °F) to 48 °C (118 °F), while record lows are around 2 °C (36 °F) to 3 °C (37 °F), although some parts of the central Kimberly plateau can drop below 0 °C (32 °F) during the dry season.

And for comparison, here's a summary of Israel's climate:

Israel has a Mediterranean climate with long, hot, rainless summers and relatively short, cool, rainy winters. The climate is as such due to Israel's location between the subtropical aridity of the Sahara and the Arabian deserts, and the subtropical humidity of the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean. The climate conditions are highly variable within the state and modified locally by altitude, latitude, and the proximity to the Mediterranean.

On average, January is the coldest month with average temperatures ranging from 6 to 15 °C (42.8 to 59.0 °F), and July and August are the hottest months at 22 to 33 °C (71.6 to 91.4 °F), on average across the country. Summers are very humid along the Mediterranean coast but dry in the central highlands, the Rift Valley, and the Negev Desert. In Eilat, a desert city, summer daytime-temperatures are often the highest in the state, at times reaching 44 to 46 °C (111.2 to 114.8 °F).

More than 70% of the average rainfall in Israel falls between November and March; June through September are usually rainless. Rainfall is unevenly distributed, significantly lower in the south of the country. In the extreme south, rainfall averages near 30 mm (1.18 in) annually; in the north, average annual rainfall exceeds 900 mm (35.4 in). Rainfall varies from season to season and from year to year, particularly in the Negev Desert. Precipitation is often concentrated in violent storms, causing erosion and flash floods. In winter, precipitation often takes the form of snow at the higher elevations of the central highlands, including Jerusalem. Mount Hermon has seasonal snow which covers all three of its peaks for most of the year in winter and spring. In rare occasions, snow gets to the northern mountain peaks and only in extremely rare occasions even to the coast. The areas of the country most cultivated are those receiving more than 300 mm (11.8 in) of rainfall annually, making approximately one-third of the country cultivable.

So, which of the two is more hospitable, and by what margin? After all, if more than 300mm of rainfall per annum makes an area 'cultivable' by Israeli standards (a staggering low threshold, but one which is exceeded in only a third of Israel's territory today), then by Israeli standards, the entirety of Kimberley can be deemed to be 'cultivatable', even its deserts.
 
Here's a summary of the Kimberley's climate:



And for comparison, here's a summary of Israel's climate:



So, which of the two is more hospitable, and by what margin? After all, if more than 300mm of rainfall per annum makes an area 'cultivable' by Israeli standards (a staggering low threshold, but one which is exceeded in only a third of Israel's territory today), then by Israeli standards, the entirety of Kimberley can be deemed to be 'cultivatable', even its deserts.

Except the Jews didn't go to Israel for the climate. If they had been rationally looking for the best place to create a homeland then I imagine that Palestine would have been low on the list. (Probably around the Kimberley regions place)

Israel has an emotional and historical pull. Kimberley does not. Emotion will make people accept a less than optimal situation, absent that it's hard to see why the Zionists would want poor quality land. (I could see them pushing for land in Eastern Europe or perhaps North America. Though whether that would be feasible is another matter.)

After WW2 the international community was likely to agree to a much better offer. Which given the lack of infrastructure and harsh conditions, even if they had accepted Kimberley, I imagine the settlers there might have second thoughts and push for something better. (Or perhaps indemnities from Germany to fund massive improvements for the area; like roads, power supplies etc etc. As you say it is inhabitable, but the region lacks the infrastructure for easy settlement.)
 

SinghKing

Banned
Except the Jews didn't go to Israel for the climate. If they had been rationally looking for the best place to create a homeland then I imagine that Palestine would have been low on the list. (Probably around the Kimberley regions place)

Israel has an emotional and historical pull. Kimberley does not. Emotion will make people accept a less than optimal situation, absent that it's hard to see why the Zionists would want poor quality land. (I could see them pushing for land in Eastern Europe or perhaps North America. Though whether that would be feasible is another matter.)

After WW2 the international community was likely to agree to a much better offer. Which given the lack of infrastructure and harsh conditions, even if they had accepted Kimberley, I imagine the settlers there might have second thoughts and push for something better. (Or perhaps indemnities from Germany to fund massive improvements for the area; like roads, power supplies etc etc. As you say it is inhabitable, but the region lacks the infrastructure for easy settlement.)

Bringing up the post which I made immediately before that:

Back then, the Kimberley was actually more populated than it is today, with a larger population and a similar population density to that of the Aden Protectorate (South Yemen)- or at least, it did have a larger population than it does today, prior to the mass deportation of the Japanese, who had been the largest ethnic group in the Kimberley region prior to WW2. This offers a more cynical explanation for the Australians' motives in offering the Jews settlement in this region- to fill the vacant towns and villages left behind by the deported Japanese Australians. For the most part, these towns and ports already existed, as did the basic infrastructure needed to support the settlers.

They'd have been filling a vacancy. Not setting up a new colony, but moving into an existing colony (albeit a relatively derelict and neglected one, with the existing infrastructure and industrial base being sub-par; akin to Russian America or the Danish West Indies) after having purchased it (or, rather, been gifted it as a gesture of good-will) from its previous owners. Pearling was still a relatively profitable industry (albeit becoming less so), and the way was clear to exploit the Kimberley's massive gold deposits (several of which had already been discovered at this point in time) and diamond fields. The region's oil and gas fields hadn't been discovered yet, but they'd still be there in abundance, just waiting to be developed.

That 'poor quality land' may well have pretty infertile soils, but it's also one of the most resource-abundant regions on earth. As a diamond-producing region (today, IOTL), it's second only to Botswana. If you were a Jew at this time, would you have been so quick to turn it down? Or would you have pushed to acquire it, and to fill the recently vacated (i.e, not yet derelict) near-ghost towns, ports and villages left behind by the expulsion of the original Japanese Australian community, as a base from which to prepare for the push back into the Holy Land?
 
Last edited:
"prior to the mass deportation of the Japanese, who had been the largest ethnic group in the Kimberley region prior to WW2"

The what? What mass deportation of the Japanese are you talking about? If you refer to the incarceration of Japanese during WW2 it was unfortunate but also the same practice adopted in the US. Many of these were deported back to Japan after WW2 but you are talking about 1-2,000 people at most, not tens or hundreds of thousands. In WW2 Australia interned ~7000 residents of all backgrounds, 1500 of whom were British and most of the rest were of German or Italian origin, not Japanese. What "mass deportation" of Japanese are you referring to?

And as for the Japanese being the largest ethnic group, can you supply some figures to support that suggestion? From what I've read the Chinese community were the largest Asian community in Broome, and that doesn't include the Aboriginal and white communities in the area which were larger still.

"to fill the vacant towns and cities left behind by the deported Japanese Australians"

What vacant towns and cities are you talking about? What form of alternate history are you living in? There was a Japanese community in the Kimberley, mostly working in the pearl industry but it was still a small community. SinghKing, you seem to be trying to conjure an idea that there were towns and cities lying vacant because Australia evicted a large Japanese community. Absolute rubbish, none of that is correct. The Japanese community around Broome appears to have varied between several hundred and a thousand or so, and it was still smaller than other local communities. And there have never been cities in the Kimberley area, not ever, not for any ethnic group. Even today, the population of a booming Broome varies seasonally between 15-50,000 (and that's including the tourists).

As for relative geography, Riain is correct and you are wrong. Don't just believe some figures off the internet without trying to understand their meaning. Water is a big problem in the Kimberley (don't go off the annual average as it's pretty much meaningless as it is so heavily skewed by the monsoonal drenching), the soils aren't that good actually and these factors have ended all the pipe-dreams about turning the area into 'Asia's breadbasket'.

The idea of sending a Zionist community there to survive is ludicrous, it's the same level of ignorance that led to 19th century carve ups of the world because some administrator in Whitehall or Paris thought drawing a straight line on a map made sense. A century later people are doing the same stupid thing even with all of history and even the internet to inform them. Sheer, bloody madness! As Riain said, it would basically be sending them to a shit hole, nice to visit when you are a pampered 21st century tourist in an airconditioned hotel complex and 4WD, but painfully hot, alien and short of food and water in the 1930s. Plus, any proponents of the plan will have to explain how the Jewish people will see the deprivations of trying to survive in the Kimberley are somehow more spiritually attractive than the cherished Holy Land. I can't see generations of Jews earnestly proclaiming "Next year in Wyndham" each Passover, can you?
 
" near-ghost towns, ports and villages left behind by the expulsion of the original Japanese Australian community"

Still more fantasy - name these abandoned ports and towns?
 

SinghKing

Banned
"prior to the mass deportation of the Japanese, who had been the largest ethnic group in the Kimberley region prior to WW2"

The what? What mass deportation of the Japanese are you talking about? If you refer to the incarceration of Japanese during WW2 it was unfortunate but also the same practice adopted in the US. Many of these were deported back to Japan after WW2 but you are talking about 1-2,000 people at most, not tens or hundreds of thousands. In WW2 Australia interned ~7000 residents of all backgrounds, 1500 of whom were British and most of the rest were of German or Italian origin, not Japanese. What "mass deportation" of Japanese are you referring to?

And as for the Japanese being the largest ethnic group, can you supply some figures to support that suggestion? From what I've read the Chinese community were the largest Asian community in Broome, and that doesn't include the Aboriginal and white communities in the area which were larger still.

"to fill the vacant towns and cities left behind by the deported Japanese Australians"

What vacant towns and cities are you talking about? What form of alternate history are you living in? There was a Japanese community in the Kimberley, mostly working in the pearl industry but it was still a small community. SinghKing, you seem to be trying to conjure an idea that there were towns and cities lying vacant because Australia evicted a large Japanese community. Absolute rubbish, none of that is correct. The Japanese community around Broome appears to have varied between several hundred and a thousand or so, and it was still smaller than other local communities. And there have never been cities in the Kimberley area, not ever, not for any ethnic group. Even today, the population of a booming Broome varies seasonally between 15-50,000 (and that's including the tourists).

img-world_war01.gif


And BTW, the overwhelming majority of the 'Chinese' who were interned in Australia in WW2 were Taiwanese- their nationality, at that time, was Japanese, and they were interned for this reason. As such, the 'Japanese' community in Broome did in fact exceed the size of the Aboriginal and White communities in the area. To put things into perspective, the size of the Japanese cemetery in Broome exceeds that of the Japanese cemetery in Singapore. That implies that the pre-WW2 Japanese population of Broome exceeded that of Singapore- and Singapore's was estimated to be around 6,000, prior to the post-war repatriation of the original Singaporean Japanese community. According to my sources:

During World War II, more than 16,000 Germans, Italians and Japanese were interned in Australia when war broke out with those countries.

Although there were slightly fewer Japanese civilians interned than Italians or Germans (i.r.o. 4,300), the rate of internment of Japanese was higher than any other nationality, with 98 per cent of all Japanese in Australia interned, in comparison to 31 per cent of Italians and 32 per cent of Germans (Lamidey 1974, p. 53). This was because Japanese were more conspicuous in the population, and also because “Japanese nationals are not absorbed in this country as are many Germans and Italians” (Internment Policy, War Cabinet 1941) and thus were considered more likely to become spies.

Obviously, 4,300 isn't a vast amount. But by 'mass deportation', I wasn't talking about raw numbers, I was talking about proportionality. And given the rather limited appeal of the region, those vacancies should still be sufficient to meet the initial demand, don't you think?

As for relative geography, Riain is correct and you are wrong. Don't just believe some figures off the internet without trying to understand their meaning. Water is a big problem in the Kimberley (don't go off the annual average as it's pretty much meaningless as it is so heavily skewed by the monsoonal drenching), the soils aren't that good actually and these factors have ended all the pipe-dreams about turning the area into 'Asia's breadbasket'.

The idea of sending a Zionist community there to survive is ludicrous, it's the same level of ignorance that led to 19th century carve ups of the world because some administrator in Whitehall or Paris thought drawing a straight line on a map made sense. A century later people are doing the same stupid thing even with all of history and even the internet to inform them. Sheer, bloody madness! As Riain said, it would basically be sending them to a shit hole, nice to visit when you are a pampered 21st century tourist in an airconditioned hotel complex and 4WD, but painfully hot, alien and short of food and water in the 1930s. Plus, any proponents of the plan will have to explain how the Jewish people will see the deprivations of trying to survive in the Kimberley are somehow more spiritually attractive than the cherished Holy Land. I can't see generations of Jews earnestly proclaiming "Next year in Wyndham" each Passover, can you?

The annual figure IS important. The monsoon problem isn't any more of an issue there than it is in Rajasthan (in fact, it's considerably less of an issue, given that Rajasthan's soils aren't markedly more fertile than those of the Kimberley. Rajasthan receives significantly less annual rainfall than anywhere in the Kimberley, Rajasthan's figures are even more skewed by the brief seasonal 'monsoon drenching' than the Kimberley's are, and Rajasthan's minimum, maximum and average annual temperature ranges and extremes are all almost exactly the same). But Rajasthan is still one of the breadbaskets of Asia regardless. Why is that?

And as for the last paragraph- please, try and calm down. Why are you getting so aggressive? It's a WI ATL thread, not a political chat thread about whether the Jewish people should have established a Jewish state there instead of (or rather, as I'm actually trying to argue, as well as) in Israel after WW2. Big difference. I'm not saying it would've been a better plan, and I'm certainly not saying that it would've been more popular than the Zionist movement to return to the Promised Land, back in Israel. But it'd still be the best place for the Zionists to relocate the base of their Bricha and Aliyah Bet operations to, and increase the intensity of their Ha'apala operations from, by far; and after Israel is established ITTL, even if there isn't a political union between the two Jewish states which effectively leads to the Kimberley becoming Israel's Australian Territory, after the subsequent mass exodus back to their more romantic homeland in Israel, there should be still enough Jews who'd be willing to stay in the Kimberley (who've got settled in, started families, and managed to establish successful livelihoods and businesses there), for the region to gain and keep a Jewish population majority, enabling the Jewish nation there to remain viable. Even if it's just where the illegal Jewish would-be immigrants to Palestine are deported by the British ITTL, instead of to the internment camps in Cyprus which they established IOTL, that'd still be an influx of 25,000 to 50,000 initial settlers. A population size comparable to that of New Caledonia by the present-day should be deemed to be extremely realistic, a population size comparable to that of Cyprus would still be plausible, and a population size comparable to that of Oman should probably be deemed to be the borderline maximum.
 
Last edited:
From the national archives of australia
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/snapshots/internment-camps/

"Australia interned about 7000 residents, including more than 1500 British nationals, during World War II. A further 8000 people were sent to Australia to be interned after being detained overseas by Australia's allies. At its peak in 1942, more than 12,000 people were interned in Australia."

That is still a number for Japanese internees in the order of several hundreds to a thousand or so. Not even 4,300. If you look carefully at the map you posted, it also indicates that the number of civilians deported from Australia after WW2 was less than 1000. Which is exactly what I've been saying. The higher number is from POWs, not internees who had lived in Australia.

I wasn't referring to Chinese internees, which you appear to have misunderstood, but the Chinese community in Broome, which appears to have been larger than the Japanese community. Many of the shopkeepers and service suppliers for the pearl industry were Chinese. Please read my post carefully as I think the meaning was pretty clear.

"And given the rather limited appeal of the region, those vacancies should still be sufficient to meet the initial demand, don't you think?"

You are talking about less than a thousand people, that in no way suggests there is ample accommodation for a Zionist homeland. You earlier mentioned, several times, that there were ghost-towns, cities and ports that were available for the Jewish settlers to move into. Where were these, can you name one? I think you have completely misunderstood the demagrophics involved with your wild claims of mass deportations. The descriptor "mass" refers to a bulk quantity, it is not a measure of proportionality or relative contribution. If you really did mean your use of "mass deportation" to refer to a high proportion of a small number rather than a large number of people then you haver used an inaccurate and misleading description.

You are incorrect about the significance of rainfall patterns in the Kimberley and are making the same mistake that wide-eyed optimists have had for trying to turn the Top End into a "bread basket". You seem to believe that after a wikipedia-based comparison just because Rajasthan has similar metrics to the Kimberley that then magically the Kimberley must also be able to support the same agriculture and population density. It's the same simplistic and clumsy style of thinking that has led to numerous disasters throughout human history. It's exactly the same approach that resulted in European settlers thinking that European farming practises would work in Australia, so leading to the huge problems of deforestation, salination, feral animals etc that we have today. The Kimberley is not Rajasthan anymore than it is Yorkshire or the Rhone Valley etc. What works in other farming areas such as Rajasthan isn't going to just magically work in the Kimberley because the weather patterns, flora, soil types and structures are different. If you doubt this, consider for a minute why a variety of modern farming practices have consistently failed there, even from people who have put a lot more thought into it than "oh but if Rajasthan can grow lots of food then surely the Kimberley can".

"And as for the last paragraph- please, try and calm down. Why are you getting so aggressive?"

Oh I'm calm. If I appear to you to be aggressive it's not my intent, but your posts on this thread have included poorly rationalised plans based on some faulty assumptions (ghost-towns? mass deportations?) that illustrate the same sloppy thinking that gets derided in discussions of historic mistakes. And this one would be worse than most. To send a Jewish community to the Kimberley would be a highly cruel and unusual punishment. To think that they could somehow thrive would be laughable if it wasn't for the tragedy that would ensue. And for you to now blithely assume that an initial influx of 25,000-50,000 Jewish settlers plucked from Europe in the 1920s and 30s are going to be able to survive and maintain a community in the Kimberley just staggers belief. Even today the total population of the area is only around 35,000, because it is a bloody tough place to live. You can't just plonk people from the other side of the world into an alien and hostile landscape and say "there, now make it your home" and expect them to survive. The death toll would be horrific. And that's even if the locals don't mind.

There have been too many tragedies in history due to someone making a decision about other peoples' lives without not knowing what they were talking about. 'Seems a good idea on paper, it's just a shame that all those thousands died'. This would be one of those ideas. Particularly when those ghost towns you refer to turn out to be mirages.
 

SinghKing

Banned
From the national archives of australia
http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/snapshots/internment-camps/

"Australia interned about 7000 residents, including more than 1500 British nationals, during World War II. A further 8000 people were sent to Australia to be interned after being detained overseas by Australia's allies. At its peak in 1942, more than 12,000 people were interned in Australia."

That is still a number for Japanese internees in the order of several hundreds to a thousand or so. Not even 4,300. If you look carefully at the map you posted, it also indicates that the number of civilians deported from Australia after WW2 was less than 1000. Which is exactly what I've been saying. The higher number is from POWs, not internees who had lived in Australia.

I wasn't referring to Chinese internees, which you appear to have misunderstood, but the Chinese community in Broome, which appears to have been larger than the Japanese community. Many of the shopkeepers and service suppliers for the pearl industry were Chinese. Please read my post carefully as I think the meaning was pretty clear.

"And given the rather limited appeal of the region, those vacancies should still be sufficient to meet the initial demand, don't you think?"

You are talking about less than a thousand people, that in no way suggests there is ample accommodation for a Zionist homeland. You earlier mentioned, several times, that there were ghost-towns, cities and ports that were available for the Jewish settlers to move into. Where were these, can you name one? I think you have completely misunderstood the demagrophics involved with your wild claims of mass deportations. The descriptor "mass" refers to a bulk quantity, it is not a measure of proportionality or relative contribution. If you really did mean your use of "mass deportation" to refer to a high proportion of a small number rather than a large number of people then you haver used an inaccurate and misleading description.

You are incorrect about the significance of rainfall patterns in the Kimberley and are making the same mistake that wide-eyed optimists have had for trying to turn the Top End into a "bread basket". You seem to believe that after a wikipedia-based comparison just because Rajasthan has similar metrics to the Kimberley that then magically the Kimberley must also be able to support the same agriculture and population density. It's the same simplistic and clumsy style of thinking that has led to numerous disasters throughout human history. It's exactly the same approach that resulted in European settlers thinking that European farming practises would work in Australia, so leading to the huge problems of deforestation, salination, feral animals etc that we have today. The Kimberley is not Rajasthan anymore than it is Yorkshire or the Rhone Valley etc. What works in other farming areas such as Rajasthan isn't going to just magically work in the Kimberley because the weather patterns, flora, soil types and structures are different. If you doubt this, consider for a minute why a variety of modern farming practices have consistently failed there, even from people who have put a lot more thought into it than "oh but if Rajasthan can grow lots of food then surely the Kimberley can".

"And as for the last paragraph- please, try and calm down. Why are you getting so aggressive?"

Oh I'm calm. If I appear to you to be aggressive it's not my intent, but your posts on this thread have included poorly rationalised plans based on some faulty assumptions (ghost-towns? mass deportations?) that illustrate the same sloppy thinking that gets derided in discussions of historic mistakes. And this one would be worse than most. To send a Jewish community to the Kimberley would be a highly cruel and unusual punishment. To think that they could somehow thrive would be laughable if it wasn't for the tragedy that would ensue. And for you to now blithely assume that an initial influx of 25,000-50,000 Jewish settlers plucked from Europe in the 1920s and 30s are going to be able to survive and maintain a community in the Kimberley just staggers belief. Even today the total population of the area is only around 35,000, because it is a bloody tough place to live. You can't just plonk people from the other side of the world into an alien and hostile landscape and say "there, now make it your home" and expect them to survive. The death toll would be horrific. And that's even if the locals don't mind.

There have been too many tragedies in history due to someone making a decision about other peoples' lives without not knowing what they were talking about. 'Seems a good idea on paper, it's just a shame that all those thousands died'. This would be one of those ideas. Particularly when those ghost towns you refer to turn out to be mirages.

Stop insulting me, stop using handwavium to deride every single piece of thoroughly-researched evidence I've presented, and actually try reading the OP.

In the 1930s and 40s The Kimberley Plan was a proposal the establish a Jewish state in an empty part of North West Australia. If successful, it would have been 25% larger than the current State of Israel; without any of the racial and religious problems of Israel/Palestine. The plan was vetoed by the Canberra Government in 1945. What if it had happened?

I'm actually trying to speculate about the possibilities in an ATL where it happened, AS PER THE OP. Yoy, on the other hand, are yammering on, and on, and on, about how much a hell-hole it is, and how any people who even tried to settle the region would be condemned to die horrible deaths, solely on the basis of how sparsely populated the region is today. Because the Jews would have been incapable of overcoming that level of adversity, right?

You couldn't just take a significant portion of Jewish people, from the other side of the world, into an alien (even though it's not that different from the climate back in Palestine) and hostile (even though they won't have overwhelming numbers of hostile Arabs trapping them in on all sides, deriding their state as being evil and calling for its destruction) landscape, tell them "here, you're welcome to take shelter here from the Nazis, who are commiting industrial-scale genocide against you", and expect ANY OF THEM to EVEN SURVIVE. The death toll would be HORRIFIC!

NO- how could ANY Jewish person at the time NOT realise that going to the Nazis' Death Camps and Gas Chambers instead would've been a far less horrific and more merciful fate? Certainly, compared to the highly cruel and unusual punishment of trying to eke out a existence free from anti-semitic persecution, under their own rule, in the Kimberley. 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? The Kibbutzim farming communities- those weren't Jewish, right? Face it- those pathetic Jewsish Untermensch would be DOOMED...! :eek::rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
"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.

"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.

"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.

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?
 

SinghKing

Banned
"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.
 
Last edited:
A couple of things.

I'd suggest that the biggest difference between rajasthan and kimberley is rajasthan is one of the cradles of civilization with millennia of development and adaptation to the conditions of the area. Kimberley only got it's first cattle station in 1881, so is light years behind in terms of infrastructure development and agricultural practice.

I would not be surprised to find that 100, 000 Japanese people passed through northern Australia in the 70 years before ww2 but there certainly weren't 100, 000 Japanese living in the Kimberley in the 30s and 40s. The figure of 4300 detainees doesn't suggest that there is the ability to accommodate a million Jews.
 
Funny.:rolleyes:
Every time that one propose in this forum an alternate land for the Jews peoples,in Asia,Africa,America or Australia,EVER someone scream that is impossible,that milions of peoples can not live there,that not even with billions of investiments and technological resources the proposed land can be made habitable,that the one and the only land suitable on this planet is the Palestine.
EVER,every time.:)
Is a one of the myths of this forum?
 

SinghKing

Banned
A couple of things.

I'd suggest that the biggest difference between rajasthan and kimberley is rajasthan is one of the cradles of civilization with millennia of development and adaptation to the conditions of the area. Kimberley only got it's first cattle station in 1881, so is light years behind in terms of infrastructure development and agricultural practice.

I would not be surprised to find that 100, 000 Japanese people passed through northern Australia in the 70 years before ww2 but there certainly weren't 100, 000 Japanese living in the Kimberley in the 30s and 40s. The figure of 4300 detainees doesn't suggest that there is the ability to accommodate a million Jews.

Never claimed that there was. And after looking into the Kimberley Plan further, I acknowledged that, yes, the recent expulsion of the Japanese Australians would be a non-factor anyway. But the Freeland League's Kimberley Plan only called for 600 to 800 initial settlers, to commence the construction of infrastructure and housing, and the establishment of an agricultural and industrial base, ahead of the main influx of Jewish immigrants. And even according to the official Australian figures, around a third of all of the Japanese Australians who were interned and subsequently expelled from the country, somewhere between 300 and 350, previously resided in the Kimberley region. So, while the space isn't quite there to house all of them, a fair portion of the initial Freeland League settlers could still move into properties in the general region which had recently been vacated by expelled Japanese Australians.
 

Devvy

Donor
Without getting into the debate about Kimberley itself (fascinating as this is to read)...

By 1940ish, around 350,000 Jewish people had immigrated to what was the Palestine region.

If I'm a Jew and fleeing Europe after 1940, I'm far more likely to go to Palestine as well, as:
a) a lot of fellow Jews are already there, and thus many other Jews are likely heading there as well
b) it's the Holy Land; the historical and spiritual home of my people
c) it's a lot closer, safer (*1) and easier to get to then Australia.

(*1) at least prior to 1948 when the State of Israel was created in Palestine, and the Middle East went nuts.
 

SinghKing

Banned
Without getting into the debate about Kimberley itself (fascinating as this is to read)...

By 1940ish, around 350,000 Jewish people had immigrated to what was the Palestine region.

If I'm a Jew and fleeing Europe after 1940, I'm far more likely to go to Palestine as well, as:
a) a lot of fellow Jews are already there, and thus many other Jews are likely heading there as well
b) it's the Holy Land; the historical and spiritual home of my people
c) it's a lot closer, safer (*1) and easier to get to then Australia.

(*1) at least prior to 1948 when the State of Israel was created in Palestine, and the Middle East went nuts.

But what if you were one of those Jewish illegals placed in the extremely harsh living conditions of the Cyprus internment camps? Wouldn't you take the offer to get out of the prison camp and go to the Kimberley- even if it's just as a get-out-of-jail free card, enabling you to make a second attempt to emigrate to Palestine again? Hence my previous comment about how the Jewish Freeland in Kimberley would rapidly become the base of operations for the Bricha and Aliyah Bet organisations, the ideal place from which to legitimize their operations to get Jewish settlers to Palestine. And surely, at least one or two percent of the Jewish settlers who pass through would be willing to consider staying there for the long haul? Surely ITTL, given its wealth of natural resources, the Zionist Israelis would support a political union, or at the very least a customs and trade union, with the Jewish Freeland in the Kimberley?
 
Given that there was considerable illegal immigration I doubt many people would want to go from Cyprus 300km from Israel to settle thousands of km away in the deserts of the Kimberley.
 
"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."

What? You think that my being concerned that dumping Jewish emigres from Europe into the Kimberley is a bad idea is anti-semitism? You're kidding? In my opinion I'd say IF there's any anti-semitism being displayed it's on the part of idiots who support the hare-brained notion that putting these people into a hostile alien environment with insufficient infrastructure is a good idea. This numbskull plan gives little thought to the situation these people would be put in, and is based on poorly thought out ideas. That's how tragedies occur, through bad planning and faulty assumptions. This would be people's lives your palying around with. There would be no "ghost towns" and cities for them to move into as you foolishly proclaimed. The Kimberley is a harsh country, and for people with no experience of the area and no existing infrastructure to help them survive while they tried to get the experience required, it would be a disaster.

If there's any anti-semitism around consider the situation you would be putting these people into and then who would be responsible for the resulting tragedy? Don't start throwing around racist insults, especially something as inflammatory here as calling someone anti-semitic, without thinking about the ramifications of your suggestions. I think it's a dumb plan because it would lead to unnecessary deaths and hardship, you're the one promoting a badly thought out plan that would lead to disaster.
 

SinghKing

Banned
What? You think that my being concerned that dumping Jewish emigres from Europe into the Kimberley is a bad idea is anti-semitism? You're kidding? In my opinion I'd say IF there's any anti-semitism being displayed it's on the part of idiots who support the hare-brained notion that putting these people into a hostile alien environment with insufficient infrastructure is a good idea. This numbskull plan gives little thought to the situation these people would be put in, and is based on poorly thought out ideas. That's how tragedies occur, through bad planning and faulty assumptions. This would be people's lives your palying around with. There would be no "ghost towns" and cities for them to move into as you foolishly proclaimed. The Kimberley is a harsh country, and for people with no experience of the area and no existing infrastructure to help them survive while they tried to get the experience required, it would be a disaster.

Well then, you can condemn Isaac Nachman Steinberg and his Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization ITTL as being anti-semitic idiots for having come up with their numbskull plan to settle the region, can't you? Because I'm sure that they didn't do any planning whatsoever, that they didn't even consider the need to build infrastructure to support the influx of Jewish migrants, that their whole Kimblerley Plan was built solely on faulty assumptions, and that all of the Jewish numbskulls stupid enough to even try and settle there wouldn't have had the intellectual capacity between them to even consider that those original assumptions were faulty until each and every one of them died from the harsh conditions.

READ THE OP- the whole premise of this thread is that the Kimberley Plan DOES get approved and implemented ITTL. That part's not up for debate or negotiation. The question is what would happen next, how the Jewish Freeland and its settlers would actually fare there, and the impact which it would have on history elsewhere. I get it; your answer to that question is "It was an ****ing stupid, evil plan; the Kimberley is an uninhabitable alien world, devoid of all life, and all Jewish numbskulls who go and settle there are going to die in a holocaust, along with their stupid dreams of a stupid Jewish Freeland. The end." But I'm allowed to present my own alternate answer to the OP's question as well, which is just as valid as yours. And in the event that the OP wants to develop this into an actual ATL, then I'd say that my attempts to provide creative input in the thread will have been far more helpful and productive than your own.

If there's any anti-semitism around consider the situation you would be putting these people into and then who would be responsible for the resulting tragedy? Don't start throwing around racist insults, especially something as inflammatory here as calling someone anti-semitic, without thinking about the ramifications of your suggestions. I think it's a dumb plan because it would lead to unnecessary deaths and hardship, you're the one promoting a badly thought out plan that would lead to disaster.

Like I said, I'M NOT THE ONE putting the people into this situation. I'M NOT PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE, because this is an ALTERNATE HISTORY THREAD. Isaac Steinberg proposed the Kimberley Plan himself IOTL. He was "the one promoting a badly thought out plan that would lead to disaster", NOT ME. You may think "it's a dumb plan because it would lead to unnecessary deaths and hardship", but ITTL, HE'D be the one attempting to implementing it. The Freeland League were willing to try. The Yiddish investigator who they themselves sent to survey this region of the Kimberley and discern the suitability of its climate for settlement, Melech Ravitch, deemed it to be a worthwhile endeavour all the way back in the mid-'30's, optimistically asserting that the area could accommodate as many as a million Jewish refugees- with 1930's infrastructure, agricultural techniques and technologies. And they'd had at least seven, maybe eight years to refine the plan by the time the scheme was vetoed IOTL.

If they still believed that they could pull it off then, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I'm sure that they researched the plan's feasibility and practicalities during that period far more rigorously than any of us could today. And I was expressing the concern that the central premise of your argument- that the Jews were inherently incapable of such an endeavour- could merely be perceived to be anti-semitic. I wasn't trying to be inflammatory- quite the opposite. I was simply trying to warn you that your own comments were becoming increasingly inflammatory, hinting that you should consider composing yourself and approaching this in a more rational manner to avoid drawing the ire of the forum moderators. And FYI, expressing my opinion that an argument built upon a foundation of assumed Jewish inferority "struck me as being somewhat insulting, perhaps even verging on anti-semitism" is most certainly NOT a 'racist insult'.
 
We know it's not your idea, the dude who proposed it is the moron since there are any number of hurdles to leap not least being the sheer unsuitable nature of the area. However I think the biggest hurdles would be the unwillingness of Australia to excise part of its sovereign territory and the lack of broad support from Jewish people who are supposed to live there.
 

SinghKing

Banned
Funny.:rolleyes:
Every time that one propose in this forum an alternate land for the Jews peoples,in Asia,Africa,America or Australia,EVER someone scream that is impossible,that milions of peoples can not live there,that not even with billions of investiments and technological resources the proposed land can be made habitable,that the one and the only land suitable on this planet is the Palestine.
EVER,every time.:)
Is a one of the myths of this forum?

I'm beginning to wonder myself. Can't the Jewish people live anywhere else in the world other than the Palestine? DON'T Jewish people live elsewhere in the world, outside Israel itself? I mean, you have to wonder- even if we were talking about an ATL where the Freeland League were offered Rockland County, NY instead of the North-East Kimberley, gained the official approval of both the majority of the American people and the US goverment, and set about establishing the Jewish Freeland, INDEPENDENT of the Zionists' attempts to recolonise the Palestine and established the nation of Israel, would people still be arguing that it'd be doomed to fail? That no Jewish people would ever be able to survive in that frigid, harsh, unforgiving wilderness without any established pre-existing infrastructure, and no Jewish people would ever contemplate settling there when they had the option of colonising Israel instead?
 
Top