The Uganda Scheme

Theodore Herzl, the visionary that established Zionism, was a taken in Jew, that did rule out Palestine the ideal choice for a resurgent Jewish nationalism.

When the British supplied to him a homeland in East Africa (today’s Uganda), he approved as well as recommended it to the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basle in 1903. After bitter blames, the Congress made a decision (295 for, 178 against) to send out an “investigatory payment” to the territory to evaluate it and also report back.

Herzl promised that the Uganda scheme is not an alternative to the recovery of Palestine as the historic homeland of the Jewish people. However his activities defied his speech. He went after the British proposal to his death (in 1904) as did several various other noticeable Jewish leaders, organized in the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO).

The plan was emphatically abandoned just after the Balfour Declaration which granted the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine under the British required.

In the meanwhile, other territorial plans arised: in Canada, Australia, Iraq, Libya, and Angola. Close to 10,000 Jews worked out in Texas. Stalin developed a “Jewish Homeland” in Birobidjan. Also the Nazis tried to restore a few of these “services to the Jewish question” – notably in Lublin, Poland and in the island of Madagascar.