was Israel not attacked?

If you're attacked, you don't have the right to escalate the situation however you please, especially if it's against international law.

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

Sure, it's hard. It isn't easy sometimes for me either. You just have to take in information and draw your own conclusions. Of course, depending on the information you get your view will ve skewed. In my opinion it's impossible to be biased, but you have to at least try to siniff out the propaganda and lies, which I commend you for doing.

from what I gathered, I believed that Israel just took some land on which other people were living ~70 years ago, displacing these people.

That's true, sort of. Israel was given part of the land after WWII by the UN as a result of wellmeaning intentions. However, a conflict arose, culminating in the First Arab-Israeli war. Next was the Six-day war some 20 years later, followed by other conflicts. Then 5 years later, the Yom Kippur war. Other than that there have been other conflicts with the Palestinians, notably in 2007, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Finally there's the current conflict which started last year.

Of course, some of this was justifiable by Israel, but the problem is the way Israel treats Palestinians. There's a good chance that if they weren't treated as 2nd class citizens none of the later conflicts would've happened.

Most notably, Palestinians were rsther explicitly forced out of Israel during the Nakba, itself a breach of International law. Nowadays, Palestinians are living under an apartheid regime: they are scrutinised much more closely during security checks, thir homes are appropriated by Israeli settlers, mkre often than not under the protection of the Israeli government. They don't have the same civil rights as Palestinians are tried in miliary and Israeli citizens in civil courts. Military courts generally don't offer the same legal or human rights protections, punishments are mlre severe, there's limited legal representation of the defendant and no confidential communication with lawyers, and Israel isn't an exception to this.

Regarding escalation: the Palestinians are rutinely, and often violently opressed in a systemic manner.

They can't get building permits. They get kicked off their land by settlers. They get retaliated against indiscriminately.

If you systematically opress someone like this, of course the desperate people will fight back in their desperation. What is unnecessary escalation is the disproportionate response of mass murder via starvation and bombing, as well as the systematic opression during the 70 years you mentioned.

None of this would've happened if Israel just came to some land, holy or otherwise, planted a flag and fairly enforced their laws according to basic principles of human rights