It's wild to me that if you wrote a fictional account of a vassal state that was constructed in the center of "hostile" territory, who exercised brutal violence on all it's neighbors, including strictly for the purpose of territorial acquisition, who was funded and supplied implements of war from it's super-state that vastly exceeded it's own production capabilities, which it used to win every conflict it found itself in, and who's officials regularly make the news for calling for outright genocide, everyone would call them the bad guys. Meanwhile in the real world we just call that Israel, and waive vaguely at "complicated politics."