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It has recently occurred to me that I am very uncultured, I don't know who is who or who is doing what and why or what happened when or why or how or what. And I definitely don't want to ask anyone on twitter.

You're asking for a history that goes back nearly a century if you want the full background. This is a topic nearly everyone understands only in fragments and could fill entire textbooks. You'll need to start with Zionism as a movement and the formation of modern Israel. Get an understanding of the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how this has fostered a culture of death-obsessed fanatics who won't stop until someone gets wiped out.

No mere forum is a good place for this topic in detail. You'll need to commit a few days to some really depressing research before you can speak confidently on it. It is, after all, one of the most complex points of geopolitical conflict on the planet.

“Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion.” – Haj Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem (Radio Berlin, March 1, 1944; quoted in Robert Wistrich, Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger [American Jewish Committee, 2002], p47)

“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” – Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League (BBC, May 15, 1948)

“If the Jewish state becomes a fact, and this is realized by the Arab peoples, they will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea…” – Hassan al-Banna, Muslim Brotherhood founder (New York Times, August 2, 1948)

“In demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees the Arabs mean their return as masters, not slaves, or to put it more clearly – the intention is the extermination of Israel.” – Salah al-Din, Egyptian Foreign Minister (Al-Misri, Egypt, October 11, 1949; quoted in Harris O. Schoenberg, A Mandate for Terror: The United Nations and the PLO [Shapolsky Books, 1989], p239)

“Israel, to the Arab world, is like a cancer to the human body, and the only way of remedy is to uproot it just like a cancer…” – King Saud of Saudi Arabia (New York Times, January 10, 1954)

“… collective Arab military preparations, when they are completed, will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel.” – Arab League (Summit Declaration, January 1964; quoted in Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World [Penguin, 2001], p230)

“Every one of the hundred million Arabs has been living for the past nineteen years on one hope – to live to see the day Israel is liquidated…” – Egyptian government broadcast (Voice of the Arabs, May 18, 1967; quoted in Walter Laqueur, The Road to War [Pelican Books, 1969], p105)

“Fight, Arabs. Let them know that we shall hang the last imperialist soldier with the entrails of the last Zionist.” – Syrian government broadcast (Radio Damascus, May 23, 1967; quoted in Walter Laqueur, The Road to War [Pelican Books, 1969], p59)

“Whoever survives will stay in Palestine, but in my opinion, no-one will remain alive.” – Ahmed Shuqayri, PLO founder (Al-Yawm, Lebanon, June 3, 1967; quoted in Moshe Shemesh, “Did Shuqayri Call For ‘Throwing the Jews into the Sea?’” Israel Studies, Summer 2003, p72)

“Strike the enemy’s settlements, turn them into dust, pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews.” – Hafez Assad (Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War [Oxford University Press, 2002], p293)

“The operation of liberation is not merely removing an imperialistic base, but what is more important: the extermination of a society; not only is military defeat the aim in the Palestinian war of liberation, but the liquidation of the Zionist character of the occupied land, whether in manpower or in society.” – Fatah statement (Liberation of the Occupied Lands and the Method of Struggle Against Direct Colonialism, September 1967; quoted in Y. Harkabi, The Palestinian Covenant and its Meaning [Vallentine Mitchell, 1979], pp47-8)

“As long as a Zionist existence remains even in a tiny part of it – that will mean occupation. The important thing is to liquidate the Israel occupation, and there is no difference between the territories lately occupied and those occupied before.” – Egyptian government broadcast (Radio Cairo, March 17, 1968, quoted in Gil Carl AlRoy, “Do the Arabs Want Peace?” Commentary, February 1974)

“We don’t want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else. ” – Yasser Arafat, PLO chairman (Washington Post, March 29, 1970)

“I want to tell Carter and Begin that when the Arabs set off their volcano there will be only Arabs in this part of the world…” – Yasser Arafat (Associated Press, March 12, 1979)

“The Prophet of Allah… says: ‘The Last Hour would not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them, and until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim or Servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him…’” – Hamas Covenant (Gaza, August 18, 1988; reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 1993, pp122-34)

“It is [an] incontrovertible fact that Palestine is Arab-Islamic and that the Jews are the scum of humanity…” – Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) (Al-Qabas, November 28, 1989; quoted in Barry Rubin, Revolution Until Victory? The Politics and History of the PLO [Harvard University Press, 1994], p180)

“It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.” – Hezbollah statement, issued under Islamic Jihad alias (United Press International, March 24, 1992)

“We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion. Jews will not want to live among Arabs. I have no use for Jews. They are and remain Jews.” – Yasser Arafat, speech to Arab diplomats in Stockholm (Jerusalem Post, February 23, 1996)

“… the criminals, the terrorists – are the Jews… They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: ‘Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them’ … Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them.” – Dr Ahmad Abu Halabiya, Palestinian Authority cleric (Palestinian Authority Television, October 13, 2000)

“Thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who… revenged in advance, against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him, for his revenge on them was not enough.” – Egyptian government newspaper (Al-Akhbar, Egypt, April 18, 2001; repeated on April 25, 2001)

“All spears should be directed at the Jews, at the enemies of Allah, the nation that was cursed in Allah’s book. Allah has described them as apes and pigs… We blow them up in Hadera, we blow them up in Tel Aviv and in Netanya… until the Jew will hide behind a stone or a tree, and the stone or the tree will say: Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, a Jew is hiding behind me, come kill him.” – Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, Palestinian Authority cleric (Palestinian Authority Television, August 3, 2001)

“If they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” – Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader (Daily Star, Lebanon, October 23, 2002)

“[The Jews] are accursed in heaven and on earth. They are accursed from the day the human race was created and from the day their mothers bore them… These accursed ones are a catastrophe for the human race. They are the virus of the generation, doomed to a life of humiliation and wretchedness… they are the plague of the generation and the bacterium of all time… Thus, the Jews are accursed – the Jews of our time, those who preceded them and those who will come after them, if any Jews come after them.” – Egyptian government newspaper (Al-Akhbar, Egypt, April 29, 2002)

“… the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers…” – Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, Palestinian Authority cleric (Palestinian Authority Television, May 13, 2005)

“My message to the loathed Jews is that there is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere! We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews. We will not leave you alone until we have quenched our thirst with your blood, and our children’s thirst with your blood.” – Hamas broadcast (Jerusalem Post, February 17, 2006)

“Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one.” – Ahmad Bahr, Palestinian Legislative Council acting speaker (Sudan TV, April 13, 2007)

“The Prophet of Allah has promised us that the Jews will gather in Palestine, and that the Muslims will fight them, and totally kill them.” – Muhammad Nimr al-Zaghmout, head of the Palestinian Islamic Council in Lebanon (Al-Kawthar TV, May 15, 2007)

Credit to Paul Bogdanor for the compilation.

While people think this is an over-complicated and highly "nuanced" topic it's actually not.

Hamas originated in 1987 out of the Muslim Brotherhood, which started getting involved in political activities several years prior. Specifically, Hamas originated from al-Mujama al-Islamiya, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a charity organization which in the early 1970s the Israelis actively encouraged as a counterweight to the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They did this because in the early 1970s PLO and Arafat were becoming an ever more dangerous organization responsible for the Munich Massacre, and various plane hijackings. Hamas emerged at the onset of the first intifada, which is an uprising, and one that was extremely violent leading to thousands of deaths.

Hamas' goals are simple: to Liberate Historic Palestine (which means the destruction of Israel) and replace it with a Theocratic Palestinian State. Their activities during the first intifada was generally targeted towards Palestinian traitors and collaborators. In the early 90s, Israel was able to expell a large chunk of them to Southern Lebanon where they became allies of Hezbollah, another organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

In Febuary 1994 Baruch Goldstein a settler gunned down 21 Muslims during prayer, during Ramadan. An additional 19 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during the ensuing riots. Hamas swore to avenge the deaths and declared that since Israel didn't discriminate between fighters and civilians, they would treat Zionists in the same manner. This massacre, called the Hebron Massacre profoundly changed Hamas, which originally specifically targeted military personnel, but now targeted civilians as well.

Thus began a series of bombings and attacks on Israelis, and in kind, Israel tried to assassinate (sometimes successfully, sometimes with failure), Hamas leadership. In the process Hamas' prestige began to grow among the Palestinians as Fatah's began to decline since the Oslo Accords were signed.

When the failure of peace talks in 2000 occurred, the Second Intifada was launched which led to a stark increase in popular support for violence towards Israelis by Palestinians, and also support for Hamas suicide bombing techniques. There was a point in the early 2000s where Hamas offered a 10 year cease fire in exchange for a Palestinian state in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. This was rejected.

In 2006 Hamas decided to participate in the Palestinian elections, winning, in a very fair election. This came at the heels of the Israeli withdrawal out of Gaza, which caught Fatah by surprise, and gave Hamas the fuel to say that their version of resistance was effective. Both Fatah and Hamas attempted at a short-lived unity government but that never came about and a short civil war occurred, which allowed Hamas to take full control of Gaza.

Since Hamas' ultimate objectives have always been eradication of Israel it's take over of Gaza effectively made it a defacto state of war with Israel, leading Israel to blockade it from the north and Egypt from the South. Hamas' and Gaza's entire economy is based on international donations. So how does Hamas get those donations?

Well for a while Hamas had a great idea: they would launch rocket barrages towards Israel, cause damage, perhaps take a few lives, which pushed the Israeli public to want something to be done. And since Israel is a democracy the political class was obliged to carry out counter-measures. Considering that Gaza is one of the densest cities in the world, any counter-strike would leave civilian casualties, especially since many of the locations of where rockets were being fired from, or munitions stored were schools and hospitals. This is by design. Once the Israelis retaliated, Hamas would gladly show off the dead Palestinians and Children to the rest of the world, largely Europe, to garner sympathies and donations.

This is why Israel developed door knockers, and the Iron Dome. The Iron Dome effectively makes it so that Israel doesn't have to respond every time. This leaves Hamas increasingly destitute, and, increasingly desperate.

This is what I mean when I say, Hamas's business model is selling to the world dead Palestinians. Because it's true. They have no incentive to develop or govern Gaza. They could have turned it into the Singapore of the Middle East. Their goal is simple: make Israelis kill Palestinians which they use to get hundreds of millions of dollars from sympathetic people largely in Europe. Heck, the leader of Hamas doesn't even live in Gaza, he lives in Qatar (another Iran's proxies).

It is important to note the following. Domestically, Hamas doesn't tolerate any dissent. Any kind of protests are brutally put down, and anyone caught working with, selling anything to, Jews or Israelis, is instantly put to death. Yet because they are seen as the only active Palestinian resistance movement, a large segment of the Palestinians, when polled, prefer Hamas over Fatah, viewing Fatah and the PA as a corrupt puppet of Israel.

Israel can make peace with West Bank and the PA. They can sign, tomorrow, a permanent agreement about borders, and a free, independent Palestinian state. They can even give Palestinians East Jerusalem, and even the right of return. They can give them everything, and it would not be enough for Hamas. Because for Hamas, and a large segment of the Palestinian population the goal is the liberation of historic Palestine.

Effectively, Hamas is a more violent, Islamist branch of the Palestinian resistance and commands the respect and admiration of half of Palestinian society that largely came into it's own after the death of Arafat, and proved it's chops through violence towards Israelis. It won Gaza but sustains itself through a violent grift, since it's entirely blockaded (for good reasons), and it cannot collect taxes. It's main focus is the reclamation of all of Historic Palestine, and implied ethnic cleansing of Jews from some future Islamist Palestinian State.

There is a tvtropes entry on that

Well, what do you want to know and how much do you already know?

Do you know how to place Israel on a map? If someone said the Balfour Declaration, Suez Crisis, Six-day war and the First and Second Intifada (some people are even calling this the Third Intifada) would it mean anything to you? Do the list of names and groups in the comments above mean anything to you?

The only thing multiple news sites can agree on right now is that social media is purposefully getting flooded with propaganda

Non of that matters. He asked why is there animosity between Israel and Hamas.
Simply put. One believes the other should be destroyed totally, and they now own a city, Gaza, and use it as a means to realize their dreams.

Sure it does, and he asked "explain the Hamas vs Israel conflict" with a sub-current of not knowing what's going on. We have no way evaluating already present knowledge without asking.

The conflict is also not just Israel and Hamas animosity, unfortunately. There's a bunch of other questions to ask ! For example, in your explanation, while useful doesn't answer how Hamas gets it's weapons. How does a despised terrorist group get so many missiles? The involvement of the PLO in the Jordanian & Lebanon civil war is important, since it changes who's providing them with funding since the times of the Six Day War. The bit on the Soviet Union may even help answer why so much of the far-left is supportive of a terrorist organization, and why it makes twitter and other social media such a shitshow.

That helps explain why the US have to park a carrier group and say in no-uncertain terms to Iran and Syria (and Russia by proxy, which is another thing to learn) to stay out. It may even be worthwhile to know why Russia may be purposefully lighting fires around the world, as part of it's war in Ukraine and it also helps to know why Turkey's President is acting squirrely about this.

At the very minimum, knowing where Israel and it's neighbors are is useful, too many people in the past few decades have had strong opinions of areas they couldn't place on a map.

This war is also part of a giant PR battle, and that's not a joke.

Hamas attacking to disrupt Israel's diplomacy with Saudi Arabia was an explanation I was given, to explain why they attacked now of all times.

Moving from history and international politics, Palestine and Israel's internal politics are also important.