Zion reborn

[West]

Simon Cameron


Quite simply put James Buchanan was supposed to have the job of actually negiotating with the british over the Oregon Treaty. We of course wanted more land. But it soon became clear that America and Mexico were going to war and we did not want a conflict on two fronts. So the decision was made to finally settle the northern boarder with the British. A case of bad vitles made most of the diplomatic core dreadfully sick so I ended up with the position.

Before the negiotations began, I managed by happenstance to see Mr. Pakenham with his child in a sweet shop. I stayed silent and observed as the child annoyed his father and eventually in time the man simply gave his child what he wanted to shut him up. Now armed with this information I gathered the others and we did things like tap on the desk. Crack our nuckles cough, speak slowly and ask him to repeat what he said.

I and the others kept up the pressure for hours, and I saw him get more and more frustrated and angry, and with this came some degree of sloppiness. Once we got to the matter of Vancouver island that's when I struck. My goal was a minor movement of the boarder up to the 50th instead of the 49th, and I planned to use the British's desire to not split the island to get this concession.

It was then that Richard Pakenham simply exploded in a complete and utter rage.

"Id rather give the island to the damned jews then let you yanks have a single mile of it."

While most people would get quite angry about such a remark, I realized that having another country in control of that island would prevent its use as a staging base to attack american assets in the pacific. Complicating the British empires ability to potentially attack us in the future was well worth the cost of losing a tiny chunk of the island. So I called his bluff, and told him that I would rather the Jews have the island then the brits.

And I managed to get him to sign it, he went home feeling victorious keeping the island out of american hands, and we went home feeling the same having kept it out of british hands. Really the creation of the first Jewish state in centuries was done quite by accident, and its survival is more or less maintained by a small amount of mutual spite and a desire by both us and the British to make sure that the island remains out of the others hands.

Its a relatively small country with europe becoming more tolerant and other places being richer and better places to emigrate to there were not as many takers as one would expect. A few thousand fleeing from Russian pogroms but not much more. Truthfully I think that sleepy little island will most likely remain small and sparsly populated.

After all I very much doubt there will be any reason to move to such a remote location in mass.

 

[West]

Leon Pinsker


When some one offers you free land the reply should almost always be yes.

32,100 square kilometers, 12,400 square miles the land gifted to us by the american's and British empire was a little bit bigger then main land Belgium. A decent enough size for a country, the fact that it was an island with relatively peaceable neighbors was a good thing for us. Diplomacy was thus simplified, all we had to do was not anger our two neighbors, and of course hope and pray they never went to war and be forced to pick a side.

It is thankful that such a thing did not happen and we could in relative peace settle our little island.

In my youth in the Russian empire I scoffed at this largess and thought it unneeded, the people who moved to the island in those early days were the desperate. And even 20 years after the gift their remained but a few thousand Jews on the island with most deciding to move elsewhere. A small and quaint little country in my opinion at the time. I tried assimulation russian language courses and the like but time soon proved the russian heart to be cold and filled with hate.

So I turned to the rather obvious solution and decided to take a trip to the lands gifted to us, and I found the island a relatively plesant place. The weather was for the most part temperate the western half getting most of the rain. There was lumber a small mountain range and areas we could use as a port. I found it acceptable and started an effort to help my fellow jews move to our new country. To my surprise the Russian government did not quell this desire and in fact labled us as a charitable organization.

It seemed their desire to be rid of us entirely outweighed their desire to torment us further. Still Canada, America, Argentina, Australia and other settler regions were stiff competition, and most jews who emigrated went there. Still my efforts have had some amount of success these days it looks like the island will have more then a hundred thousand people by the time of the our centuries end.

Its been a lot of hard work but my family my children live in a nation of their own and even if it be a quiet place were little happens it is ours.

 

[West]

Nathan Birnbaum


Before the Dreyfus affair I like many jews in europe saw New Israel as a well meaning but unnessary gift.

I mean you cant really hold any hate in your heart for a decision by two nations to put aside a grievance to give our people a land of their own. Don't get me wrong a few people took the offer but they were mainly the ultra orthodox, or people who just couldn't make it back home. There was a feeling in the community that we had turned a corner and that we could finally be full members of western society.

For me the dryfus affair shattered that forever, the fact that France one of the most libertine countries in the west one of the first countries to liberate its jewish communities could so very easily turn on its patriots and show such hateful antisemitism well what hope did the rest of europe propose? Theodore felt the same, and we were able to gather the first zionist congress in 1898.

And this created a split.

The pragmatists and the idealists.

The pragmatists represented by myself and Theodore noted that there was already a rather large island set aside for a Jewish state that had been around for 40 years by that point and this state while not reconized by most of the world was reconized by the British empire and the United states its two principle neighbors. The hard work of getting land, of getting neighbors to reconize our claims and trade and a lot of the hard foundational things that go into creating a nation were thus already done. The land was there just move in.

The Idealists though they wanted old Israel the call of the ancient homeland was for them in escapable.

I thought it a foolish thing but the only way to make it work was an agreement to disagree. Some funds would be set aside to try to get back the old home land and others would be focused on building up the country that had already been given to us by providence. 7 years later after a disasterous defeat Russia once again seized up in an aborted revolution. I had by this time moved to our new country.

News of pogroms, foiled and successful came out and deep down I knew it wasn't over some thing deeply ugly was coming and we needed to work even harder to rescue our brothers and sisters and bring them some where safe. Bring them to our new growing homeland. While I of course hoped against hope I was right. I was not exactly surprised at the ugliness that was to follow.

 

[West]

Israel Zangwill



Its strange the part of the comunity that was clearly in the most peril the Jewish community in the Russian empire was also the part of the community that produced the most Idealists the ones who insisted on our new nation being in old Israel. You could bring up the fact that we had been gifted our own country a rather sizable island over 60 years ago. One that was reconized by its neighbors where all of the hard work had been done that all you had to do was move there more then an ocean away from Russia from europe from the old world until you were blue in the face.

The russian Zionists would still look at you and insist that it had to be in old Israel. Bring up the issues with the Turks or the local Arabs or how you would be litterally surrounded by enemies with little in the way of natural defenses or you could have a very defensable island with two mostly friendly neighbors and they would still scoff at you. Meanwhile it was the western zionist movment the ones who were in the least amount of danger who took the most pro island stance. But like many said we had to compete for settlers with Canada, America, Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, and a host of other places.

So dispite raising money it was always a struggle to get new settlers.

And things were getting more and more tense in europe and I just felt like we had to get our people out of there as quickly as I could. I just felt as if there was a tinder box and the old world was getting ready to go off to burn down in flames and in the aftermath of such things our people would burn with it. So we agreed to disagree split funding help the Idealists buy tracts of land in Palastine while we helped everyone else move to our new Zion.

It was slow it was incremental and in some cases it felt akin to pulling teeth but the islands population slowly grew and then the war came.

And when the great war came it was by then far too late to get out none of the players would let any one escape its wrath. I watched europe burn from my island safe from the insanity in the east and could only feel a great sense of pity and swear to redouble my efforts our efforts when the madness ended.

 

[Xenophonte]

Interesting premise. Watched

 

[West]

David Kaplan



There was no winning the great war.

I get that our co religionists in europe wanted us in the fight both the central powers and the entant but lets remember one thing. At that time Israel had maybe 200,000 people tops. We didn't have a navy, we didn't have an army. I know that sounds strange but we had two pretty peaceable neighbors that reconized our right to exist and didn't have any hard feelings. So even if we had an army how exactly were we supposed to get them around an entire continent to fight a war in a country two oceans away? That's just the logistics of it.

Second the politics, lets be frank here of the roughly 200,000 people at least half of them were newly arrived refugees from russia who came here to escape the pogroms. Politically speaking joining the entant would have torched the career of any politition who suggested it. The feelings towards russia were ones of deep rage for centuries of abuse no love lost there. Then the idea of joining the central powers.

All right Canada is right next door and has well over 7 million people, even if we had a military and Navy which we didn't what do you think would have realistically happened if we decided to fight for the Central powers who buy the way had absolutely no way to support us if they did join in the fight. So of course we were neutral and when the UK came in asking for help we just noted that we didn't even have an army, or an arms industry, or a navy and just didn't have the numbers to actually do anything.

And to be fair to the brits they accepted this, I mean we did have a textile industry and helped make uniforms for the Empire's military but that was the extent of what we could do, and lets be honest another concern? What's going to happen to our people if we do join a side? Because we did have disaspora's on both sides, and the only jewish country on earth joining a side? Thats going to have conquences very bad conquences for our co religionists in the area.

So for a host of reasons we stayed out of that mess, due to our low numbers, limited economy, desire not to start pogroms against our co religionists and because we were too weak to actually fight. I mean don't get me wrong as a country with 70 or so years as a nation we did have a decent court system, the economy was functional but we just didn't have the people to make a splash in the world and while our local diplomacy was easy we had two neighbors we had to keep happy.

Not having a military at all allowed us to save money to build roads and build up our ports, and things like that but it was a thing that left us woefully unprepaired for war much less the great war. So we pleaded weakness and stayed out of the fight which was accepted because we were weak, and one can only look at europe and know for a fact that our decision to stay out of the war was of course the correct one.

Having not fought we assumed that life would go on much as before the great war small trickles of disgruntled refugee's coming in slowly.

We were wrong the deluge was coming and Israel would never be the same.

 

[West]

General Ian Hamilton



We did not offer the territory of Palastine out of the kindess of our hearts.

New Israel had quite a few connections to the central powers, and it was the center for the zionist movement and quite a few of them had connections with Germany, with Austria hungery, and with the Ottoman empire. The government wasn't aware of it being quite neutral and quite ineffective in general but there was a spy network there for the taking. And the Idealist fraction wanted to be taken.

So we did that. and then we got the news from our agents that they knew the exact time and place of our little campain in galopoly. We were walking into a trap and the attack was going to happen in three weeks. So I brought up the simple idea if all of their troops are concentrated in one place waiting for us why not attack some place else? So we attacked and took the Mugla region and found little resistance took all of it in a few days. We didn't venture forth we instead fortified the region. The goal was to create a western front for the Turk and bleed him so much that he would come to terms.

Instead the leadership paniced and just sent in every man they could. They would take completely untrained men give them a rifle and have them march into prepared machine gun positions and trenches with alterlry and if we didn't have gas that might have just worked. But we did and we had masks and the enemy did not and they never once fixed this deficiency.

By the time the actual army got to our positions we were quite dug in, knew they were coming and quite well stocked and ready and these men had not learned the horrors of Trench warfare. Their very best people their young turks were slaughtered, eager to prove their new reforms and their own strength and then killed. More and more died, the attempts to conscript the arab populations which had little love for their turkish oversearers caused rebelions which we armed and funded.

The sick man of europe saw that his days were indeed numbered and fought like a rabid animal, but not a smart one. We made little progress in Antolia yes but that was the point to give them the idea that through shear force of men and will they were holding back the western assault to give them false hope and force them to waste men, and they did this every were, and quite simply put they could not keep it up.

We thought the conflict quite over with Armistice of Mudros, the young turks were quite done and the country tired. Instead a bomb went off killing quite a few diplomats including an american observing one, and the former government was couped by a group we would come to call the bitter enders. As viscious as they were incompetent they decided to fight to the very end.

And they did, the war in Antolia would end in 1920 with the treaty of Sevres, of all of the countries involved the ottoman empire would lose the most people. 2 million dead and half of those during the reign of the bitter enders. One 6th of the turkish population gone and a 3rd of their men. The treaty was quite sever, we completely disarmed them.


And the following partition was not a kind one.

The country was split up, Intitially the area around the straits was an international zone well in truth a zone we controlled but officially international. Not even a year after the treaty was signed the Turks decided to rebel. After we had completely disarmed them, after we had removed much of their industry. This ended just as well as you expected but concessions had to be made. The French were forced to promise that their mandate would be turned into a Kurdish state and republic. We were forced to create an Assyrian state in our mandate in exchange for their aid and the former international zone was given to the greeks in exchange for holding the line.

After this we were quite done with the Turks nonsense the treaty of Severs would be enforced with population transfers. All Turks were forced to leave and live in the new Turkey no exceptions. The kurds had to move to Kurdistan, The Amenians to Armenia and the like, and for awhile there was peace and I honestly thought we had scene the end of the Turks as a power and of conflict in Antolia.

I was very much wrong, and in my aging years I some times wonder if we would have all been better off just marching to disaster in Galopoli and being done with this nonsense entirely. And thats before you get into the migrains our other promises in the middle east bestowed upon us.

 

[West]

David Kaplan


So after the 1st world war the one thing the Greeks, the Italians, the Armenians. the kurds, and the turks all agreed on was that they wanted the Jews out of Antolia and that was the start of it the Deluge.

Suddenly its 1922 and you have 100,000 people who no longer have a home and when pressed pretty much all of them wanted to go to the historic homeland but that would require the british to keep their promises, and there is nothing an englishman hates more than keeping a promise so they were promptly sent to us, and we were told to just roll with the whole our population just doubled thing.

But you know if that had been the end of it, we might have been fine, but you have to remember that Austria hungry just fell and you have a bunch of newish countries in central europe and the Balkans. As imperial citizens Jews were not treated nicely but they were tolerated, but now you had nation states that were made for ethnic majorities of those regions and they wanted the others gone.

Hungary for the Hungarians, Bulgaria for the Bulgaria that sort of thing and these young fragile governments decided the best thing to do was blames all of their problems on the jews and expel their entire jewish population you know after stealing all of their money and property.

So Romania? Over 200,000 jews, the serbs sent over 10,000 the Hungarians sent over 800,000 thousand, and what they all had in common is that they were coming in with nothing but the clothes on their back. The British were of little help and tried to close Palastine. This is when we talked to the american's we had some connections and told them that if we didn't get some relief then there was absolutely no way we could stop a flood of illegal immigration from New Israel into their country.

For once anti semitism worked in our favor and the Americans talked to the british and in exchange for some debt relief the british opened up Palastine and the American's also agreed to provide some aid to at least attempt to keep our island stable. This was great because in 1925 as soon as this deal was hatched the Austrians decided all their jews had to go and that was well over a million people.

Half went to us half went to Palastine, by the time the 1920s ended we had well over 2 million people, and it just didn't stop. Because you also had people fleeing the soviet union, you had polish jews trying to get out, and the first thing Hitler did when he got to power was guess what? Kick out all of the jews and steal all of their stuff. If it wasn't for the american's we would have died we no longer had the ability to feed ourselves and our economy was in a constant state of chaos as we tried desperately to deal with the incoming flood of people.

But with the great depression the American people needed a place to dump food so their farmers wouldn't go bust, and we needed food to live. Of course this meant that the americans had total leverage over us but when the alternative is dying well saying what ever the yanks wanted to hear on anything beat starving to death, by the time the second world war had started half of europes Jewish population of an estimated 8 million people had been expelled.

Either into Palastine or to New Israel.

These would be the lucky ones.

 

[West]

Emil Cohn -Former refugee and former man at arms.


The best way to discribe the deluge? Chaos

You had over a million people stuffed onto the islands of Vancover, the government of New Israel decided they had to spread people out as much as possible to lessen the load which of course meant you had to build all of the infostructure on sight, this is when the government actually decided to look at the land grant and found out that we actually owned more land then we thought we did, because the yanks being very spiteful had included a clause that british columbia ended at the shore line and that all of the islands officially belonged to us in a small subsection of the now decades old charter.

Being swarmed with refugees with more on the way the government brought it up in 39, the british at first fought this and then the second world war started a week later and they decided that some islands off the coast of british columbia simply were not worth it, and while the Canadians expecially the people of british columbia complained we were given the land, but it was not free. First we would not get all of the islands, we would be limited to the islands nearest to us and we were not to touch the charlots islands which you know fair.

We were to declare war on the axis, and we were to aid the British empire in the war. This was actually very popular because many of us had our property stolen from us by axis nations before we had been kicked out of our home countries. We of course still didn't have a navy or a arms industry but the British army was willing to let us use old Great war equipement.

We were required to send 50,000 men to aid in this conflict and we did, it was a surprisingly popular thing due to most of the islands population losing everything they owned due to pre war actions. We were given great war era equipment and then sent to shore up defenses around the empire so that the british could focus their efforts elsewhere. We didn't fight in the intitial european campain being stuck on small outposts elesewhere but my first thought upon learning of the fall of France was that this conflict was going to be a long uncomfortable and ugly war.

I was unfortantly right, but my family had already been settled on north pender Island and thus I had a duty to fight it.

I would soon find that my pessimism wasn't nearly up to the task of imagining just how bad the war would get.

 

[Orangeduke38]

I'm enjoying your story but after all this time New Zion would at least have a militia system in place. After WW1 there would have been over a quarter million mosin nagant rifles in America with no one to pay for them. They would also have the 1917 Enfield that would be put in storage of surplused. The US would also take thousands of German Maxim machine guns that they realized they didn't need so they dumped them in the ocean off New York Harbour. Buying some of this would have been very cheap and let them arm a decent reserve force. The Brits or US would have sold them a couple patrol boats on the cheap to help control smuggling and rescue the occasional fisherman if nothing else. A militia/gendarmerie force of 4-5000 should be perfectly doable even with limited resources.

The Brits were so short of weapons post Fall of France they would be accepting donated American civilian weapons.

 

[luis3007]

Having those 2 territories in Palestine and Vancouver will end up in tragedy.

With less Jewish population in the middle East, the Arabs will win with weight of numbers and the other powers may well decide that the Jews are too ambitious in attempting to have 2 countries and allow Jewish Palestine to fall to the Arab coalition without any help but taking the people out to New Israel.

 

[West]

Gündüz Kapancıoğlu - Former Grey Shirt


The thing that defined turkey after we lost, after we were forcibly removed from our homes was revenge. Revenge against the Greek, against the Italian, against the Armenian, against the Kurd but most hated of all the Arab. Much like Germany we had our own stabbed in the back story, and while the Armenians and Kurds were mostly quiet after their victory, the Arabs had no problems proclaiming from the roof tops that they alone were the reason why the Ottoman empire fell.

And we grew to hate them for this hate them so much.

We of course hated the Greek as well but they were an old enemy an honest one, the Italian like wise, but the Arabs had been fellow members of Dar Islam, they had a duty to the empire to the caliphate to fight in holy war to defend the empire and they betrayed this duty. We stewed in our own juices during the interwar period built up our industry and remained in contact with our former allies in Germany.

During this time Devlet formed the Grey shirts, an organization not unlike the one in Italy and the nazi's of Germany. When the war came we invaded Kurdistan and with the fall of France we took it. It was time for Revenge while Adolf wanted Turky to attack Armenia and the soviet union there was not much complaints about us going south the idea being we would cut off the British from india and the rest of the empire.

It was not difficult to go down not difficult to take land with the british distracted and the Arabs being disorganized.

Revenge burned in our hearts and after taking Syria we took our revenge.

Christians...those we were forced to spare for the time being as we needed our facist allies to distract the west same with the Jews we had plans for them of course they were on the list but we simply put them in ghettos and had them pay taxes until we could liquidate them. The Kurds were for the moment spared but not the Arab. They had betrayed us and now was the time for revenge.

And we took it in full. Syria had over 2 million before we arrived 80% of them being arab, we took full vengence and killed them all. The Turkmen in the area were invaluable helping us find their hiding holes. This wanton slaughter turned out to be a mistake. Yes Lebonon was so fearful that they surrendered and did not resist as we took our vengence there but the rest of the arab peoples saw the slaughter of Syria and knew they were next.

They fought like Demons, the mandate of Palastine, Jordan, Iraq all of them fighting like their very lives depended on it because they did, still we made progress but our final victory was the destruction of Bagdad. Then our logistical problems kicked in. Kurdish resistence groups from the former republic gave intelligence to our enemies. Our trucks were destroyed by road side bombs and it got harder and harder to get more supplies.

We were forced back and we made the decision to fight to the very last.

And we did, but the Soviet armies slowly dripped through the formerally neutral Armenia and then swept into our lands. Our tanks by then destroyed our reserves of ammunition mostly spent. Like the first great war we fought and fought and even stalemated the Soviet armies. Out of all of the Axis powers we lasted the longest out lasting even the Japanese.

But with the fall of the bombs and the Japanese surrender american might was on the table and their bombers struck hard and we were forced to surrender.

With that the victors got to partition Antolia as they pleased.

Italy lost their claims to the Greeks expanding their hold over Antolia. The Kurdish and Armenian nations kept their prewar boarders and then the Soviets and the americans came to terms about us. The Americans gained unified Korea in exchange for giving up a chance to have a slice of our lands. Knowing that I had committed more then my fair share of warcrimes I fled Turky on a fishing boat and moved and moved.

The Arabs still hunt us any Turk who participated in the rape of Syria and I know it is only a matter of time until they find me, but I will not make it easy for them for the hate in my heart still burns with enough power to keep me going.

 

[West]

Emil Cohn


It was a year after the fall of France that Germany started the boat people tactic.

They would get these older ships put Jews on them and have them sail the channel, the idea was to create a refugee crisis that would harm the british war effort, A lot of people were sent but the problem was this? Who was a refugee and who was a spy being hidden amongst them? And the British could hardly handle the crisis so they just flooded the mandate and our island with more.

When the invasion of the soviet union happened this only excelerated, all jews were to be deported.

The nazi's thought that a refugee crisis was more useful to their plans of war then just murdering us in mass. So as they went around the soviet union jews were rounded up to make the situation worse for the british and their allies to soak up more resources and having accepted our help they couldn't just ignore us. So people were put into processing camps to see if they were actually jewish or spies.

When the war hit Ukraine we started notcing things, like a large amount of people who were not Jews but claiming to be jews to get themselves and their families out of the soviet union. It was then that I heard about what the russians did to the Kulaks and these very desperate people just didn't want to go home. So we told them that we could only take them in if they converted.

We thought that would be enough to get them out of our hair, get them to return home to the soviet union to fight for them.

Instead quite a few people decided to convert because apparently Stalin was just that terrible of a leader, and of course the soviets were not happy about this at all. Meanwhile the turks decided to go crazy and go on a murderous rampage in the middle east, because the Arabs were the victims of the Turkish stab in the back myth, and well we kind of needed raw bodies to hold them off.

Which is how I got transfered to the mandate.

Fought alongside the Jordanians who were good fighters and Iraqis who were just....just terrible, and then we found out it was a war of extermination and well when given the choice of fight or die people fight, and the Turks they fought like the third monkey on the line to Noah's ark. They fought like there wasn't going to be a tomorrow and they did not like leaving intact cities behind as they were slowly driven off.

We could have driven them off sooner but that's when the Palastinians revolted, so suddenly we have to put that revolt down and the Turks come racing back. The King of Jordan decided to ask to talk to them, to get them to understand that the Turks were going to murder us all if we didn't work together.

So quite naturally the Mullah of Palastine decided to assanate him.

This was a bad move, his son Talal came in with an army and well that revolt was ended, as was the leadership of the entire movement. So the fight continues and we eventually push the turks back and we see just entire towns, villages, cities that were destroyed. Christians and Jews they were emaciated in slave camps and the Islamic population was in mass graves.

And it just kept getting out there getting worse. Around this time the Soviets started to stop the Germans and the American declaration of war happened. After that the boats stopped. And I felt a sense of relief I thought maybe now that the Germans were on the back foot they decided to fight a more humane war because they knew they might loose.

We didn't know about the camps, it turned out that the Germans didn't decide to become more noble they instead doubled down and create new much worse horrors.