on how far back in time one chooses to travel in defining who caused what the media are calling "the war." Short-sighted? Then how about Oct. 7, 2023 as a starting point? Hamas attacks, Israel defends. Simple as that, right? Well, hardly, to say the least, but it does make for a mouth-watering Zionist propaganda pie, doesn't it. Farther back? How about Israel's 2008 launching of Operation Cast Lead?* Or one could go still father back to some Hamas attack(s) that preceded Cast Lead. Or still farther back to some Zionist attack(s) that preceded THAT/THOSE particular act(s) of Hamas, etc., etc., etc. The exchanges of violence over the decades are countless. However many "wars" the Zionist/Palestinian conflict may be broken down into for purposes of historical organization, combined, they all comprise the same ongoing conflict that has existed for more than a century.
And who started IT? Obviously, from the broad-minded perspective, it was the one and only very first who chose violence in service of the Zionist imposition of its colonialist dream on the Palestinians at the indigenous people's expense, thereby setting the stage for all the HELL to follow.
"The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine in the late 19th century is widely seen as the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ['Zionists planned to try first to buy up the land until the previous inhabitants had emigrated; failing this, they would use violence to force them out.'] In 1938, [David] Ben Gurion [a/k/a 'Israel's founding father'] described the conflict with the Arabs as 'in its essence a political one... politically we are the aggressors and they [the Arabs] defend themselves.' Israeli historian Benny Morris, widely regarded as an authority on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the leading authority on origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, affirms Ben Gurion's description, saying: 'Ben-Gurion, of course, was right' and goes on to describe Zionism as 'a colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement' whose 'ideology and practice were necessarily and elementally expansionist.' Morris describes the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine as necessarily displacing and dispossessing the Arab population. The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish and Arab region was a fundamental issue for the Zionist movement. Revisionist Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky described the notion of 'transfer' (the Zionist euphemism for ethnic cleansing of the Arab Palestinian population) as a 'brutal expulsion' which could resolve this challenge. The idea of transfer was not unique to Revisionist Zionism, in fact, as explained by Morris, 'the idea of transferring the Arabs out... was seen as the chief means of assuring the stability of the 'Jewishness' of the proposed Jewish State.'
According to Morris, the idea of ethnically cleansing the land of Palestine was to play a large role in Zionist ideology from the inception of the movement. He explains that 'transfer' was 'inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism' and that a land which was primarily Arab could not be transformed into a Jewish state without displacing the Arab population. Further, the stability of the Jewish state could not be ensured given the Arab population's fear of displacement. He explains that this would be the primary source of conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arab population." (Wikipedia)
* Operation Cast Lead in figures:
1,387 Palestinian dead, including 773 civilians, 320 of whom were children;
13 Israelis dead, including three civilians and four soldiers killed in friendly fire;
3,425 housing units destroyed during the conflict, a further 2,843 sustained major damage and 54,800 sustained minor damage;
217 schools and 60 nurseries damaged or destroyed;
40 primary health care clinics and 12 hospitals damaged;
29 ambulances damaged or destroyed; and
One UN compound attacked.