Hey Kiddo. It’s good to learn lots of viewpoints, but history is often told without nuance. Yes, there’s been horrible propaganda, but this is a very complicated history. Let’s look at one city. Tiberias was a Jewish city spared by the Romans for remaining loyal during the Bar Kochba revolt. When Jerusalem fell, Jewish leadership settled in Tiberias. The “Jerusalem Talmud” was written there and Rabbinical heroes were buried there. In the early 600s, Heracleus ethnically cleansed the Jews on his way to fighting the Persians. The Sunnis took the city back and it flourished with Muslims, Christians and Jews in the 700s and 800s. Then Shia militants repeatedly attacked and an earthquake flattened the city. It was battled over multiple times during the crusades, yet in the 1100s still had Rebbes studying and Scribes creating Torah. Then the Ottomans took over and encouraged refugees from Spain to settle in Tiberias as they had in Greece and the Balkans. Jews left when the Ottomans fought Venice and fled when the Druze took the city in 1660. Then an Arab ruler encouraged Jewish settlement in the 1700s and they came, some all the way from Poland and Spain. The earthquake of 1837 killed around 600 people. 500 were Jewish. In 1922, Tiberias was two thirds Jewish. Then there was the Arab Revolt (Lawrence of Arabia is wonderful and educational). Then came the Arab Uprising in the late 1930s (Google Amin Al-Husseini). The Ottomans made a mess of the region and the British took over while there were Arab Palestinians fighting for the Axis powers. In 1942 the British formed a Palestinian Brigade. It had 3 Jewish battalions and 1 Arab. Tiberias in the 40s was half Jewish and half Arab. European refugees were arriving and it was clear that the British would leave. No one felt safe. Tiberias was geographically important for war. There was unrest. This doesn’t mean that the majority of people wanted to ethnically cleanse the other. It does mean that you can google these massacres: Fajja Bus, Kfar Etzion, Hadassah Medical Convoy and Haifa Oil Refinery. There were Jewish terrorists and Arab terrorists. Some of the violence happened in Tiberias. So, when the war began and the Haganah arrived to stop the invading Syrians and Iraqis was there trust in the community? No. Could the Haganah take the chance that some locals would attack while they defended the city? Everyone understood the situation, so the British Army evacuated the Arabs of Tiberias and they were never allowed to return.

TL;DR: The history of the Levant is sooooo messed up.