Yes this has been documented over and over again, there is abundant evidence of Israel using this tactic.

The thing is though, they didn't invent the tactic and they don't have exclusive rights over it, every exclusionary belief system that draws hard lines between different groups of people based on superficial features or beliefs about religion needs an evil villain to point to when people begin asking questions about the cruelty they are being asked to do, supposedly for their god or country or whatever....

One of Britains explicit strategies of colonization was to put a minority demographic/ethnicity in power over a majority and then play the fears of that power structure toppling off the people at the top or who think they are part of the "top" of society in order to retain colonial control over the nation... so I am not really claiming some great unprecedented conspiracy here, this is how these things typically go when they get maximally cynical.

Another version of this is so common it has a name, it is called "saber rattling" which is when a nation invokes resistance against a greater overpowering "evil" villain to gain legitimacy and domestic political power without actually doing anything productive domestically.