The First Catholic Crusade in 1096 A.D. was not called intentionally. The Seljuk Turks in the modern-day Iraq-Iran area have been waging war with the Byzantine Empire, not Catholic but Eastern Orthodoxy, for upwards of 25 years by this point. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine I sent a call for the western nations to aid him in repelling the Muslim belligerents, and Pope Urban II responded. He decided it would be a good time to also reclaim the holy land in Jerusalem. So the western Catholic nations of France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire sent troops to Jerusalem and sieged and captured the city. They set up the crusader states of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the county of Edessa, the county of Tripoli, and the principality of Antioch. Most of the Kingdom of Jerusalem is in what is now Israel.
So, as one can see, conflict in the Middle East is nothing new. The roots of the conflict lie deep in Christianity and Islam and how the two tie together in the Holy Land. There would be 6 more major crusades and innumerable minor ones before the era's end, all in the name of recapturing Jerusalem. Today, the conflict is hardly recognizable from where it began. The ideals are not the same, as the Islamic State is not necessarily anti-Christian as they are anti-west. Their goals are not the same, as they are not interested in Jerusalem (yet). However it can be traced all the way back to here, Pope Urban II and the First Crusade.
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