Hi Di. First of all thank you for reading.
I want to try to answer your two questions as best I can in context with this post.
Here is what I do know - Nearly 1M Jews in the Arab lands were ethnically cleansed - slowly in the 19th century and then very quickly in the 20th century through violence, pogroms, killing, etc. This is extensively and well documented and is undisputed fact.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvd58t48
https://www.facebook.com/hnaftali/photos/a.531852670159608/2889751231036395/?type=3
Another undisputed fact is that nearly 2M Christians were also ethnically cleansed from Arab lands.
To bring it back to this article - this is why you hear the word "ethnic cleansing" thrown around - when the actual fact is that that the Palestinian and Arab Israeli population has thrived since 1948 in both Israel, Gaza, and WB - the exact opposite of what you would see from Ethnic Cleansing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_Palestine
Meanwhile actual ethnic cleansing is going on right now, every day, and is completely ignored in the Sahel by Jihadi militants against the Christian communities there.
I would argue - as this post points out - there is a concentrated effort to focus attention on this misbranded of "ethnic cleansing" in Israel, which ignores ethnic cleansing that happened very recently in the Arab countries, and what is going on Africa now.
As for Self-Ghettoization - every minority group self ghettoized. I don't know if there was a specific policy of forced ghettoization like in many cities in Europe in the 19th-20th century. But there is nothing bad about this at all. In fact, self-ghettoization is as old as humanity (read Harari's "Sapiens") and stems from our primal needs to "live among like" for protection.
Self ghettoization happens with EVERY minority. It is why you have a "chinatown" in almost every major city in Europe and N. America. It is why the Castro exists. It is why hippies congregated around Haight Ashbury in the late 60s. It is Soho in London, or Prenz in Berlin, or Okubo in Tokyo, or Deerfield Michigan (example of self ghettoization of Muslims) Self ghettoization is a natural output of our primal needs.
