AFRICAN HISTORY

There was once a proposal to have the state of Israel established in present day Kenya, but the plans were shelved after the Zionist Committee rejected the offer and Israel was formed in the present-day location where conflicts with Palestinians has endured to this day.

In 1903, the Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, struck by the 'beauty, fertile soil, and the perfection and healthiness of the climate' in Kenya offered Leopold Greenbe and Theoror Herzl, the leaders of the Zionist Movement, land to be set aside as the new home for European Jews given their search for the establishment of their Jewish State. The European settlers in the Kenya Colony however furiously objected. At the meeting in Nairobi with the Zionist Movement delegation that had come on a 3-day tour to see the Uasin Gishu Plateau land upon which they'd been offered to start the state of Israel, the Europeans out rightly objected. The anti Semite settler Lord Delamere, (the leader of the colonial farmer settlers) objected the settlement of the Jews mostly because they wanted the same prime land, and also due to the fact that the Jews wanted to create a self governing area controlling production, taxes and movement. He claimed Kenya was for British people, and that Jews were of an obnoxious race and backward culture, terming them 'Ghetto-bred'. The Chair of the meeting A.E. Atkinson termed the Jews as “undesirable, obnoxious people who would be a stumbling block to the development of the Kenya Colony.” South African Boers who wanted the same land to come settle, also opposed the creation of the Jewish state. Colonel Meinertzahgen , a man who led murderous expeditions killing thousands of Africans, added more fire objecting the offer. The whites threatened to declare war against the Jews if they were settled in their Kenya Colony. (Oblivious to the fact that it was not their land, they had stolen it from the Africans.)

The 7th Zionist Congress leaders, suprised by the hatred from the European settlers in Kenya, went back and in 1905, wrote to the British Government that due to the hostility, they would not take the offer for the Kenyan land to start the Jewish state. After considering other options like North Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Texas, and Canada,  they again looked unto the Middle East, and after the Balfour declaration, settled on starting a Jewish State in Palestinian Land. Which they moved into, creating the State of Israel.