Modern-day Israel is situated in the Middle East. Specifically, it sits on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in a spot that's south of Lebanon, west of Jordan, and northeast of Egypt, and is co-located on part of the territory historically known as Palestine. Why exactly it's located there is a bit of a long story, one drawing both on the Jews' historic ties to that particular land as well as the specific geopolitics in play at the nation's founding, but suffice to say: that's where Israel is.
But what if it wasn't?
There have been Jews and others who wanted to reestablish a Jewish homeland ever since the Jews were first subjected to diasporas, and while some Jews have always insisted that such a state must be located exactly where modern Israel is today, others have adopted a more flexible approach. People have proposed putting Jewish states in spots from Eastern Africa to the Alaskan tundra and everywhere in between. And while very few of those plans went anywhere, that hasn't stopped Alternate History writers from considering how the world would look if the Jewish homeland was ultimately put somewhere else. A list of such plans is available here
, and such plans that have been used by writers include:
- The Ararat Plan: In 1825, a guy named Mordecai Noah decided he wanted to personally set up a Jewish territory. He purchased most of Grand Island, an island in Upstate New York, and announced to the world that he was founding a city named Ararat where Jews could come and live. Unfortunately for him, nobody wanted to move to Grand Island purely on his say-so, and his plan never went anywhere.
- The Jewish Autonomous Oblast: The USSR, for various political reasons (including wanting a buffer with China), set up an autonomous region called the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and encouraged Jews from all over the world to move there. This was initially somewhat successful, with Jews comprising 25% of the region's populace by 1948, but the establishment of Israel itself resulted in huge numbers of Jews moving there instead. Today the JAO remains the only jurisdiction in the world that is officially Jewish but is not Israeli; however, less than 1% of the JAO's populace is actually Jewish.
- The Slattery Plan: In 1938, as word of the Nazis' atrocities was spreading, members of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration (including Undersecretary Harry Slattery, for whom this plan was named) proposed carving out some territory in Alaska to use as a sanctuary for European Jews. However, it got blowback from American Jews (who worried that it would look like Jews were taking over part of the country) and from American antisemites (for obvious reasons). Roosevelt ultimately refused to endorse the proposal and also put deep restrictions on the number of Jews who could enter the country, which killed the plan.
- The Uganda Plan: In the early 1900s, in the middle of a series of pogroms in Eastern Europe, Britain had some investments in their African colonies that weren't paying off and desperately needed more skilled laborers. As such, the British government decided to take some of the land they'd colonized in Eastern Africa and offer it to Jews to use as a homeland. This plan managed to get enough support at the Sixth World Zionist Congress for an expedition to go and see how viable this would be, but protests from existing colonists derailed the project and Britain ultimately retracted its offer.
In addition to plans that actually existed, of course, authors have also been known to just make stuff up and put Israel anywhere and everywhere, from distant planets to alternate dimensions.
This trope tends to serve a few purposes in stories. One of the biggest is simply to show how Israelis and Jews might have adapted to various other conditions. For instance, what would "Jewish food" or "Jewish dress" be in a world where the most prominent Jewish territory wasn't Israel but was instead located in Kenya or Alaska, and how would Jewish culture and religion change if Jews still lacked physical possession of their ancient lands but instead had a state hundreds or thousands of miles away? Another purpose of the trope is to argue that things wouldn't be very different, for instance, by having the new Israel clash with another group and thus creating a new Arab–Israeli Conflict (with the other group being the Arab analogue). And finally, in cases where Israel is put in an especially significant or ironic location (such as in the middle of a balkanized Germany), the trope can be used as a Historical In-Joke to underscore how different the new world is from the one we know.
Alternate Israelis are often populated with the local equivalents of the Badass Israeli. This trope also often coincides with Historical In-Joke, Balkanize Me (for fiction that features a real country breaking up into pieces, one of which becomes Israel), and Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (for when the alternate Israel is called something else). Alien Space Bats are also occasionally used to set up less plausible sites for Israel. Contrast with Alternate-History Nazi Victory, which is where the Nazis instead of the Jews gain turf that they realistically never had.
Note: This trope is specifically for situations in which there's an independent Jewish territory, not just any work that features a large Jewish community. It also does not apply to reservations, camps, or other places where Jews are concentrated involuntarily; as such, things like the Madagascar Plan (an idea mooted by the Nazis which would have involved deporting Europe's Jews to Madagascar) don't count unless they're modified so the colony is genuinely independent (for instance, by kicking out the Nazis overseers).
Since the point of this trope is that the fictional Israels do not match up with Israel in the real world, by definition, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
- 2000 AD: After the destruction of Israel during the Atomic wars of 2070, New Jerusalem was established in Ethiope (Ethiopia and "disputed territories" in Somalia) as a new Jewish homeland, thus mimicking the Uganda Plan.
- A Thing of Vikings: The Kingdom of Berk, using land provided by an Eirish queen who married a Jewish man, allows the Berkian Jews to set up their own city, called Goshen, within the kingdom.
- The War of the Masters: One element in the backstory of this Star Trek Online-based Shared Universe is the destruction of Israel by the Arab states during World War III, which was let slide in exchange for their votes to create United Earth. There's a large Israeli-descended Jewish enclave on Alpha Centauri, but more prominent in the story is Moab III, a "warp boom" Lost Colony established on a Death World by colonists bound for Centauri who were diverted to the modern-day Federation-Klingon-Romulan border by a wormhole. The Moabites are descended mainly from Israeli Jews and Vietnamese anti-communists, among various other groups disaffected by the formation and politics of United Earth, and only tolerate the Federation because it has more than just Earth-humans in it. Some of the Moabite separatists even use explicitly Zionist rhetoric (e.g. Anh Cu'ong using "Until the Temple is rebuilt" as a Trust Password).
- The Atlantropa Articles: It's implied that the Final Solution did not happen and Europe's Jewish population was deported to Madagascar, where a Jewish state still exists thousands of years later.
- The Book of Esther by Emily Barton depicts the Khazar Khaganate, an isolated nation of Turkic Jews between the Black and Caspian Seas, surviving into the 20th century. It sits between the two belligerent nations of Germany and Russia, and with the coming of Jewish refugees from Europe, faces an existential threat.
- Diasporah: This novel by W.R. Yates is set on a Space Station called Hazara Yisroel, a refuge for millions of Israelis after a nuclear war destroyed the entire Middle East.
- Herzl Amar: In this story, there's a Jewish state in Africa (just north of Tanzania) as per the Uganda Plan, but the state's relocation changes very little about it. The story even postulates there would also be an alternate Gaza full of Masai tribesmen who are about ready to set off an intifada.
- The Mirage: After World War II, Germany is split between two states, one Christian and one Jewish. Israel's borders are defined by the Rhine and Main rivers, but since the Six-Day War, it's occupied most of Bavaria, Swabia, and the west bank of the Middle Rhine.
- The MSG Golem: In this story by Ken Liu, a Jewish girl is on a spaceship taking her to a place called New Haifa, which judging by its name (and the girl's presence) seems to be an Israeli territory on another planet.
- My Mothers Secret: This novel by Alina Adams is set in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and details what it was like for Jewish refugees inhabiting the first Jewish jurisdiction to exist since the fall of the Second Temple 1800 years prior.
- Noahs Ark: This work by Israel Zangwill retells the story of the Ararat Plan and how the scheme—to put it mildly—failed completely.
- Thor Meets Captain America: In this novella by David Brin (in which the Nazis are being aided by Alien Space Bats who take the form of the Norse gods, or who alternately have somehow been created by Nazi necromancy) the survivors of the Nazi extermination camps are supernaturally transported to "the east bank of the Euphrates" where they merge with refugees from Russia and "the astonished Persians" to form "Israel-Iran" (which clearly includes at least most of Iraq as well, but is described as having Tehran as its capital city).
- Uganda: This short story by Lavie Tidhar details a mysterious rabbi with mystical powers as he tracks the Zionist Congress's advance squad which was sent to determine whether East Africa would make for a good Jewish homeland. The rabbi also begins having visions of a possible future where Jews indeed set up a state in East Africa and things begin going awry.
- Unholyland: This novel (also by Lavie Tidhar) is another take on the Uganda Plan. It's set in a world where a Jewish state called 'Palestinia' was set up in East Africa.
- What If The Jewish State Had Been Established In East Africa is a fictional travel guide by Adam Rovner; it purports to show people the best way to experience the land of New Judea, which is set in Uganda.
- The Yiddish Policemen's Union: This Alternate History novel by Michael Chabon is set in a world where the Slattery Plan was adopted and there's a large Jewish settlement (including at least one major metropolis) in Alaska. Somewhat subverted in that it's not a true Jewish homeland, but a provisional land agreement only meant to last for sixty years and its administered as a federal district, similar to Puerto Rico. By the time the novel is set, it's set to revert back to Alaska in a few weeks and no one knows what'll happen to the Jews living there. Their best guess is that the U.S. will attempt to retake Israel (smothered in its crib in 1948) and resettle everyone there.
- The Big Bang Theory: In the episode "The Jerusalem Duality", in which Sheldon gets overwhelmed by a Child Prodigy; Sheldon, in hopes on winning the Nobel Peace Prize after he thinks that his prospects for winning the Nobel Physics Prize are moot, proposes to solve the Middle Eastern crisis by creating a replica of Jerusalem in the Mexican desert and move the Jews there. When Sheldon proposes to that idea at a party that the rest of the boys set up, the Jewish guests, and Howard, absolutely hate it.
- Crusader Kings II has a few Jewish starts playable with the "Sons of Abraham" DLC (mainly the duchy of Axum/Semien in East Africa, and the nomad Khaganate of Khazaria in 867 AD) and has achievements for restoring the Kingdom of Israel in the Levant in Ironman mode. Players of non-Jewish realms also sometimes establish a "Jewish homeland" within their borders on their own initiative.
- The New Order: Last Days of Europe:
- In earlier versions of the mod, Jews deported to Madagascar
could participate in the Madagascar Civil War against the Nazi-occupying government. If they win, they could declare an independent Jewish state in the southern half of the island.
- According to Word of God, planned (but since cut) plans for other Jewish homelands were to be in the Baltic states and Alaska.
- One of the After the End epilogue events says that concentration camp survivors settle in the post-atomic ruins of Berlin and establish a Jewish city-state named New Zion.
- In earlier versions of the mod, Jews deported to Madagascar
- AlternateHistory.com has this as a common cliche, to the point where it became a Memetic Mutation. Some examples include:
- Look to the West: Israel is established in Crimea.
- Fight and Be Right: A Jewish homeland, called the Autonomous region of Altneuland, is established in Western Australia with Yiddish as its national language.
- To a Place You Do Not Know has a truly Alien Space Bats example when God (Yes, that God) teleports His chosen people to New Zealand.
- The Grand Jewish ISOT
has Mass Teleportation of many alternate Jewish states and homelands to our timeline. Among them are Judah (a post-communist Yiddish-speaking republic in East Prussia), The Kingdom of Palestine (a monarchy ruled by the Rothschild family, in what we know as Jordan), The Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic (in the JAO), The Republic of Khazaria (between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea), a Jewish Empire of Ethiopia, and Utah from Timeline-191 (where after the Second Great War, the Mormons were expelled and it was settled by surviving Black Americans, many of whom converted to Judaism).
- Atlas Altera: Israel itself is roughly where it is now, though shifted slightly south; it covers the West Bank, the Negev, and most of the Sinai Peninsula. However, there are several other Jewish states too:
- Yiddland, formed out of the former East Prussia, is a Yiddish-speaking state of Ashkenazi Jews, formed as part of the balkanization of Germany following WWII.
- Belamora, the only Jewish nation in the western hemisphere, is an island off the coast of Brazil inhabited by Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews.
- Many of the countries in East Africa, where Ethiopia is IRL, follow the Beta Israel branch
of Judaism.
