Question 3. There is much talk about ethnic cleansing in the area. In the conflict which people have been ethnically cleansed? This is another question that people often get wrong because of a constant stream of propaganda which accuses Israel of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Arab Palestinians. The only genocide and ethnically cleansing has been done by invaders and migrants who have attacked the indigenous Jews. In modern history, the Arabs started this in significant numbers in the 1920s, before Israel was established, and continued until the Arab League armies invaded Israel in 1948, ethnically cleansing the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem of the Jews and handing over Jewish homes to Arabs. At the same time Arabs in what is now Israel were encouraged to temporarily move out to allow the Arab League armies free access to kill all Jews, and these are the Arabs that today’s became refugees. Simultaneously, around 850,000 Jews were cleansed from Arab lands. Israel has never deliberately killed Arabs. In fact, under Israeli rule the Arab population of Israel has flourished, increasing from 156,000 in 1948 to 1.8 million in 2016. At the same time the number of Jews in Arab areas has fallen from almost 1 million in 1948 to under 10,000 in 2016. [Photograph: Arabs looting Jewish homes in Sheikh Jarrah, 1947]