Somehow the world needs a good lesson in Middle Eastern history. Palestinians and a million other misinformed people think that when the newly founded state of Israel was forced to fight off five well-established and well-armed Arab enemy nations, that the Arabs living in the new state of Israel were driven out.
Absolutely false. The resident Arabs were told to leave by the ruling Muslims and the attacking Arab nations. About half left both the new Israel and the United Nations created Palestine. A small number left out of fear of local terrorism which at the time was decades old. The new State of Israel always permitted them to return. This Arab exodus is referred to as the Nakba.
The real Nakba occurred over the next decade.
More than twice as many Jews, close to 850,000, were driven out of Arab lands with their possessions and wealth confiscated. Most were settled in Israel with no compensation or support from any Arabs or international bodies.
The comparable misinformation about the history of the region has to do with settlement and the absurd term ‘colonialism.’ One hundred fifty years ago when Jews first began the modern settlement in Israel, there were about equal numbers of Jews and Arabs in the small area that became Palestine, under the rule of the Turkish Empire. The Jews had been there since Roman times. The Arabs had been wandering desert tribes with temporary settlements in the area. The Jews lived in small ancient towns. The Arabs were wandering tribal traders attracted to the area by the Jews creation of new jobs.
Jews had been settled in the entire Middle East for millenia. Jews had well-established communities in Persia, especially in Isfahan, and were long settled in Babylon the center of the Middle East, eight hundred years before Mohammed was born in the 6th century. Islam is recent. Jews are very ancient.
None of this is contested by decent people who have access to myriad documents and artifacts from the area.