Damn, that's a good question. Took me a lot of thinking, research, and analysis to come up with this answer which I'm sure many could validly critique.
I'll start with your last suggestion 1st. I mean every single Jewish person who was born in Europe and who survived the Holocaust didn't permanently lose their citizenship (meaning sure, N…
Damn, that's a good question. Took me a lot of thinking, research, and analysis to come up with this answer which I'm sure many could validly critique.
I'll start with your last suggestion 1st. I mean every single Jewish person who was born in Europe and who survived the Holocaust didn't permanently lose their citizenship (meaning sure, Nazi occupiers did not treat them as citizens and revoked all their rights, but the second the Nazis were defeated, it's not like Jews had to re-apply for citizenship, it was assumed).
Prior to the war there was a vibrant community of Jewish folks all over Europe who were full citizens. After the war, they all had the right to return to their homes in Europe, and even had a right to all of their homes and pilfered property (whether they were able to ACTUALLY be fully compensated is another matter). But as you'd imagine, after your fellow citizens murdered MILLIONS of your relatives & fellow Jews with systematic cruelty and brutality, AND with pretty substantial complicity by civilian Europeans, you'd imagine that a significant portion of the Jewish population had absolutely no desire to return to Europe. I sure as hell wouldn't have gone back. I actually find it surprising that any Jews returned to Germany voluntarily in particular.
Accordingly, the establishment of a state where any Jewish person was entitled to emigrate to after WWII was a practical necessity. It was either that or forcing a bunch of Jewish people who were rightly terrified about returning to Europe to go back, which would have obviously been horrendously cruel.
Even without knowing what I know now about the history that would transpire, the British/UN approach of just designating an area in what is now modern day Israel as the new Jewish state, notwithstanding that there were people from all faiths already living in that land, had about as much sensitivity and common sense as all the other idiotic things that colonialists did after WWI and WWII (they essentially drew arbitrary borders all over the place based on superficial criteria (e.g. they way they drew the borders for an independent India and Pakistan).
So yes, finding a proper parcel of land somewhere like South America that had good fertile land, where the local government and its residents were voluntarily willing to sell the land for proper compensation would have been the ideal solution.
But who are we kidding? After WWII, Western nations would have negotiated with a totally undemocratic government in South America to acquire the land, and would just have just screwed over the residents in the process (which would likely set off its own cycle of violence). But, ASSUMING that the purchase had been properly done, that would have been the best way to avoid this cycle of misery and bloodshed for the last 70 years.
However, if we want to be honest about how Zionists managed to legally acquire land in what currently forms part of Israel, it wasn't exactly voluntary on the part of the colonizers.
The Zionist movement is historically relatively recent (Jewish people have not been claiming exclusive rights over certain territory in the "Holy Land" for 2000+ years). Zionism really only took off between 1882 and 1903, when approximately 35,000 Jews moved to Palestine. At the time, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.
After WWI, the British were given control over the area after the Ottoman Empire was defeated, by the League of Nations in 1922. The British were brazenly anti-Semitic in ruling the area leading to justified resentment of the Brits by the Jewish population.
Then during WWII a ton of pro-Zionist Jews illegally settled in the area (I say "illegally" mostly because the Brits were bastards about allowing Jews to escape Europe during this time period, imposing quotas, taxes, etc. as did the U.S. and Canada). So in 1946, Zionist militias started engaging in guerilla warfare and terrorism against the British authorities to gain independence.
By 1947 the Brits gave up and just allowed the UN to determine a partition agreement creating a Jewish state.
Accordingly, by the time that an independent state of Israel was legally established by the UN, it was already a fait accomplis. I think there were something like 800K Jews already living there, fighting to stay there.
So I seriously doubt the Jewish settlers would have accepted a random parcel of land in South America after how hard they fought to gain independence from Britain in the preceding years, in areas that are now part of Israel.
All of which to say that with all the hindsight in the world, as of 1947, it was pretty much inevitable that a Jewish state would be established in the middle-east.
I mean short of travelling back in time to 1882 and persuading Zionists to pick another random chunk of land, this was inevitable.
But of course, back in 1882 there was absolutely no reason why the international community would come together and purchase a random parcel of land in South America to establish a Jewish state. Only the Holocaust created that impetus, at which point it was waaaaay too late to establish a Jewish state elsewhere.
I should end by noting however, that I'm not comfortable with the idea of any country being a "preferential democracy" where members of a particular religion get preferential treatment in perpetuity. There should have been a reasonable time-limit for Jewish refugees after WWII to get preferential treatment in resettlement in whatever parcel of land was given to them.
I find it fundamentally offensive that to this day, ANYONE of the Jewish faith, with zero connection to the land for thousands of years, can automatically get Israeli citizenship, while Palestinian refugees who fled the area in the war of 1948 or were expelled from the area by Zionist militias have no right to go back to physical homes in what is now Israel, that their families held for generations (Egypt has stated that they do not want to accept a mass exodus of Palestinian refugees into Egypt, in part because Israel has not, and will not, guarantee their right to return after the counter-offensive is completed, a concern that is 100% legitimate given the history post-1948. And obviously because no country in the world has the means to absorb 2.3 million refugees overnight).
Don't get me wrong, I know why Israel has established a preferential democracy: the Palestinian-Muslim birthrate far exceeds that of the Israeli Jewish birthrate, so if Palestinians were granted the right to return with full citizenship, they would democratically end preferential treatment for Jews, which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
As has been stated by people much smarter than me: "You can be a religious state, or you can be a democracy. You can't be both."
Damn, that's a good question. Took me a lot of thinking, research, and analysis to come up with this answer which I'm sure many could validly critique.
I'll start with your last suggestion 1st. I mean every single Jewish person who was born in Europe and who survived the Holocaust didn't permanently lose their citizenship (meaning sure, Nazi occupiers did not treat them as citizens and revoked all their rights, but the second the Nazis were defeated, it's not like Jews had to re-apply for citizenship, it was assumed).
Prior to the war there was a vibrant community of Jewish folks all over Europe who were full citizens. After the war, they all had the right to return to their homes in Europe, and even had a right to all of their homes and pilfered property (whether they were able to ACTUALLY be fully compensated is another matter). But as you'd imagine, after your fellow citizens murdered MILLIONS of your relatives & fellow Jews with systematic cruelty and brutality, AND with pretty substantial complicity by civilian Europeans, you'd imagine that a significant portion of the Jewish population had absolutely no desire to return to Europe. I sure as hell wouldn't have gone back. I actually find it surprising that any Jews returned to Germany voluntarily in particular.
Accordingly, the establishment of a state where any Jewish person was entitled to emigrate to after WWII was a practical necessity. It was either that or forcing a bunch of Jewish people who were rightly terrified about returning to Europe to go back, which would have obviously been horrendously cruel.
Even without knowing what I know now about the history that would transpire, the British/UN approach of just designating an area in what is now modern day Israel as the new Jewish state, notwithstanding that there were people from all faiths already living in that land, had about as much sensitivity and common sense as all the other idiotic things that colonialists did after WWI and WWII (they essentially drew arbitrary borders all over the place based on superficial criteria (e.g. they way they drew the borders for an independent India and Pakistan).
So yes, finding a proper parcel of land somewhere like South America that had good fertile land, where the local government and its residents were voluntarily willing to sell the land for proper compensation would have been the ideal solution.
But who are we kidding? After WWII, Western nations would have negotiated with a totally undemocratic government in South America to acquire the land, and would just have just screwed over the residents in the process (which would likely set off its own cycle of violence). But, ASSUMING that the purchase had been properly done, that would have been the best way to avoid this cycle of misery and bloodshed for the last 70 years.
However, if we want to be honest about how Zionists managed to legally acquire land in what currently forms part of Israel, it wasn't exactly voluntary on the part of the colonizers.
The Zionist movement is historically relatively recent (Jewish people have not been claiming exclusive rights over certain territory in the "Holy Land" for 2000+ years). Zionism really only took off between 1882 and 1903, when approximately 35,000 Jews moved to Palestine. At the time, the area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire.
After WWI, the British were given control over the area after the Ottoman Empire was defeated, by the League of Nations in 1922. The British were brazenly anti-Semitic in ruling the area leading to justified resentment of the Brits by the Jewish population.
Then during WWII a ton of pro-Zionist Jews illegally settled in the area (I say "illegally" mostly because the Brits were bastards about allowing Jews to escape Europe during this time period, imposing quotas, taxes, etc. as did the U.S. and Canada). So in 1946, Zionist militias started engaging in guerilla warfare and terrorism against the British authorities to gain independence.
By 1947 the Brits gave up and just allowed the UN to determine a partition agreement creating a Jewish state.
Accordingly, by the time that an independent state of Israel was legally established by the UN, it was already a fait accomplis. I think there were something like 800K Jews already living there, fighting to stay there.
So I seriously doubt the Jewish settlers would have accepted a random parcel of land in South America after how hard they fought to gain independence from Britain in the preceding years, in areas that are now part of Israel.
All of which to say that with all the hindsight in the world, as of 1947, it was pretty much inevitable that a Jewish state would be established in the middle-east.
I mean short of travelling back in time to 1882 and persuading Zionists to pick another random chunk of land, this was inevitable.
But of course, back in 1882 there was absolutely no reason why the international community would come together and purchase a random parcel of land in South America to establish a Jewish state. Only the Holocaust created that impetus, at which point it was waaaaay too late to establish a Jewish state elsewhere.
I should end by noting however, that I'm not comfortable with the idea of any country being a "preferential democracy" where members of a particular religion get preferential treatment in perpetuity. There should have been a reasonable time-limit for Jewish refugees after WWII to get preferential treatment in resettlement in whatever parcel of land was given to them.
I find it fundamentally offensive that to this day, ANYONE of the Jewish faith, with zero connection to the land for thousands of years, can automatically get Israeli citizenship, while Palestinian refugees who fled the area in the war of 1948 or were expelled from the area by Zionist militias have no right to go back to physical homes in what is now Israel, that their families held for generations (Egypt has stated that they do not want to accept a mass exodus of Palestinian refugees into Egypt, in part because Israel has not, and will not, guarantee their right to return after the counter-offensive is completed, a concern that is 100% legitimate given the history post-1948. And obviously because no country in the world has the means to absorb 2.3 million refugees overnight).
Don't get me wrong, I know why Israel has established a preferential democracy: the Palestinian-Muslim birthrate far exceeds that of the Israeli Jewish birthrate, so if Palestinians were granted the right to return with full citizenship, they would democratically end preferential treatment for Jews, which would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
As has been stated by people much smarter than me: "You can be a religious state, or you can be a democracy. You can't be both."