Words like this is a spit in the face of humanity.

was Israel not attacked?

I genuinely have issues trying to discern the propaganda from the facts.

from what I gathered, I believed that Israel just took some land on which other people were living ~70 years ago, displacing these people.
Those peoples didn't like being displaced and tensions grew, until attacks happened on Israel, to which Israel had mixed responses with violence and suppression, rinse, repeat and escalate for decades.

Now Israel had it with attacks from Palestine, and is going with the only chance it sees at maybe stopping it, which is a very violent war, presumably with the target of breaking the hope of resistance for Palestine (probably with lessons from the US interventions of the last 50-ish years where more civilized approaches failed)

If this (very simplified) view were correct, it seems that they are acting out of self defense, at least if you accept the existence of Israel, because if not they are the aggressors for occupying the space in the first place.