The Australian September 10, 2024. We almost housed a Jewish state in Australia by Ross Fitzgerald

Persecuted Europeans Jews tried to build a homeland in Australia

The Kimberly plan would have significantly increased our European population and helped develop the northern and far western areas of Australia.

In the 1930s, most Australians agreed with the idea of 16,500 square km of the Kimberley being purchased by Jews for an unlikely homeland.

ROSS FITZGERALD

With virulent anti-Semitism gripping Australia and many Jewish students now afraid to attend some of our educational institutions, how many readers are aware of a comprehensive plan in the late 1930s to create a Jewish state and homeland in northwestern Australia?

The promotion of this visionary scheme was led by Isaac Steinberg (1888-1957), the radical, Russian-born co-founder of the Freeland League, a decidedly non-Zionist organisation that had been formed in London in 1935 with the aim of establishing a safe haven for European Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Arriving in Perth in May 1939, the energetic Steinberg soon decided that the Kimberley region in the far northwest was the most suitable place in Australia to settle up to 75,000 Jewish refugees.

Before the state of Israel was created in 1948, there were also other much less well thought out schemes to create Jewish settlements. These included Natal in South Africa and at rugged Port Davey, in Tasmania’s southwest. In the late 1930s and early 1940s there were even plans to establish a Jewish sanctuary on the island of Madagascar.

In the context of the uprising of anti-Semitic hatred in Australia, it’s fascinating to be know that 53 per cent of the Australian population at the time agreed with Steinberg’s idea of 16,500sqkm being set aside in the Kimberly region to establish a Jewish homeland, with its possible capital in Broome, 1700km north of Perth.

It is noteworthy that from 1931 to 1936 Australia had experienced a highly respected Jewish governor-general – Sir Isaac Isaacs – who was also notable for being the first Australian-born person to fill that role. Despite 7.5 millions Jews in America, the United States has never had a Jewish person in such a lofty position.

Despite some early tendency to stereotype Jews in the pages of The Bulletin magazine, Australia has traditionally had respect for them and, in the 1930s and 1940s, a great sympathy as well.

Before, during and after the Holocaust, a number of prominent non-Zionist Jews were very keen about participating in Steinberg’s visionary homeland scheme.

The Kimberly plan tied in with a perceived need to protect and promote Australia by significantly increasing our European population, and by developing pastoral and agricultural industries in the northern and far western areas of the continent.

While the most strident opposition for tens of thousand Jewish immigrants to work and settle in remote Australia came from the influential pro-British Australian Natives Association, by 1940 the Kimberly plan was enthusiastically backed by leading business groups, the Catholic Church, Jewish leaders and by university administrators and newspaper editors, especially in Melbourne and Sydney.

Soon afterwards, full details of Steinberg’s scheme were revealed in a brochure published in Sydney for the Freeland League. This book was A Jewish Settlement in Australia, written by Solomon Stedman.

John Willcock, ALP premier of Western Australian, who was in power from 1936 until 1945, was the most enthusiastic political supporter of the Kimberley plan.

In contrast, in July 1944, prime minister John Curtin informed Steinberg (who a year before had departed for Canada to join his family there) that the federal Labor government would not “depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia” and could not “entertain the proposal for a group settlement of the exclusive type contemplated”.

Yet even after the state of Israel had been created, along with some other non-Zionist Jews, Steinberg attempted to resuscitate the Kimberly plan and was again disappointed.

In 1950, as Curtin had done six years before, the newly re-elected Liberal Party prime minister Robert Gordon Menzies strongly opposed the scheme.

This was not because Menzies was anti-Semitic – far from it – but because of his view that immigrants should integrate into mainstream Australian society, accept its values and not bring their conflicts to Australia.

As is sadly the case, the latter is exactly what so many pro-Palestine activists are doing now.

While no Jewish homeland or state was ever established in Australia, from 1933 to 1961 some 60,000 Jewish people migrated here anyway, not forming a self-contained state but in the main strongly assimilating into the broader Australian community.

Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. His most recent publication is a four-boxed set of Australian political satires, The Ascent of Everest, co-authored with Ian McFadyen of Comedy Company fame.

The Australian, Tuesday 10 September, 2024