it was only during the late 1800s when Jews started returning to Palestine
further, most European nations, including Britain, historically had expelled Jews or wanted to
as for Zionism, it was simply a nationalistic movt, akin with the times, when nationalism was the rave
there were many proposals for a Jewish homeland, including in Kenya or Uganda and also northern Australia!
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The Kimberley Plan, or Kimberley Scheme, was a failed plan by the Freeland League to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in northern Australia before and during the Holocaust.
With rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization was formed in the United States in July 1935, to search for a potential Jewish homeland and haven. The League was a non-Zionist organisation and was led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg. Soon afterwards a pastoral firm in Australia offered the League about 16,500 square kilometres (6,400 sq mi) in the Kimberley region in Australia, stretching from the north of Western Australia into the Northern Territory. The League sent a Yiddish poet and essayist Melech Ravitch to the Northern Territory in the 1930s to investigate the region and to collect data on topography and climate.
The League investigated the proposal, hoping to buy an area of 7 million acres (28,000 km²) of agricultural land for 75,000 Jews fleeing Europe.[1] Under the plan, an initial 500-600 pioneers would arrive to construct basic necessities for the settlement such as homes, irrigation works, and a power station, followed by the arrival of the main body of immigrants.[2] Ravitch in his report to the League promoted a bigger number than Steinberg, suggesting the area could accommodate a million Jewish refugees.
