Jews killed far more Muslims
Historian Zachary Foster discusses the history that has delivered us to this moment.
truthout.org
Excerpted....
Zachary Foster: I think the real origins of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began long before 1948. I think every Zionist leader, and every Zionist thinker from the late 19th century to 1948 all struggled with the same question, which was, “How is it that you establish a Jewish state in a land that is majority non-Jewish, in a land that is majority Palestinian Arab?” Different Zionist leaders took different positions, but I think that the dominant position was that the Palestinian people are not willing to subject themselves to Jewish domination. They have strong roots in the country. They have a strong national identity.
The position for most Zionists was that, “We’re going to probably have to expel them.” That was the position of Theodor Herzl. That was the position of Yosef Weitz, Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Many, if not most of the Zionist leaders leading up to ’48 believed that. And then, in 1948, when the British decided to pack up and leave, to abandon this colonial enterprise, this British mandatory government, war broke out between the Palestinians and the Zionists. Over the course of the 1948 war, the Zionist forces expelled something like 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Of course, some of those Palestinians left on their own, some were expelled by force. But the reason I would call it ethnic cleansing is because in the aftermath of the war. The Israeli military prevented Palestinians who were trying to return to their homes after the war. They prevented them from coming back, and they had a shoot to kill order.
In the year and a half after the war ended, from late 1948 to 1949 and 1950, the Israeli military shot and killed more than a 1000 unarmed, defenseless Palestinians. That’s why I think most historians, pretty much all historians, would acknowledge that this was a mass expulsion, and I would say the ethnic cleansing of half of the Palestinian population.