> And - it directly started most of the wars it fought; and one other was an attack to reclaim land occupied by a previous Israeli campaign. It's only the gulf war in which Israeli was "just attacked" (by Scud rockets from Iraq).

That's a very naive way to look at things, I really doubt you bothered looking into it deeply. Israel had little choice to go to the 1967 war, Egypt was preparing for war both rhetorically and in action (blockade of the Straits of Tiran among others). If you actually care about History and read about that period you'd understand Israel felt it was facing an existential threat. Was it the case? We don't really know. There was a good chance Egypt would have started invading. I agree that Arab states tend to sometimes speak a lot (even threatening genocide) without doing much, but Israel couldn't really know.