I'll just leave this here. Israel is a fascist, genocidal state. There is no other way to look at it.

Yes, they do actually. The Palestinians are happy to recognize Israel - again, see the Oslo accords - but do not want to agree to recognize a status that could result in Arab Israelis being discriminated against. — Baden

This is just naivete. We're not a semantical distinction away from peace. You cite to an agreement reached over 20 years ago that has meant nothing in reducing violence. In 2000, it was made very clear that the Palestinians didn't want peace at the Camp David Summit.

You can see from the article that Netanyahu would ideally have the Palestinians accept a kind of state not even his own Justice Minister wanted to accept. — Baden

This conflates two issues: (1) the Palestinian objection to the reference of the land as Jewish and (2) secular Jews objection to having Jewish theology imposed on an otherwise secular nation.

Camp David fell apart largely due to the right of return issue, which was the Palestinians arguing that every descendant of every displaced Palestinian after Israeli independence be permitted to return to Israel (not just to Gaza and the West Bank). The numbers of such people are now in the millions. Israel could not accept that condition as it would essentially cede the land right back to the Palestinians and destroy the character of the state of Israel. The Palestinian objection to having Israel desginated "Jewish" is because their objective is to make it a Palestinian nation and they won't accept anything less. That is to say, this objection by the Palestinians is not semantical. It's a clear declaration that they don't want non-Palestinian control of the land because they beleive all the land is theirs.

It's as I've said all along: They don't want a two state solution. They want control over the whole country. It seems obvious to me.

Regarding the more liberal Jews not wanting the more orthodox Jews in control (whcih is issue #1 above), that's an internal political tiff.

It is often the case that the better use of the land (which includes how its people are treated) is in the hands of others. — Hanover

This doesn't solve much. Who decides what a better use is?

I am in favor of the state of Israel, even if their existence was an imposition on the Palestinians. I like the UK, too, even though they were the colonial imperialists par excellence. Germany -- two thumbs up, despite their ghastly history. Sweden? Don't much care for Swedes, even though they haven't done anything to anybody recently (ever?). Finland? Norway? Bah, humbug! to the lands of the Frozen North. Macadamia? Madagascar? Mongolia? Good-bad-indifferent? Don't know.

The problem I am trying to get at (not to anyone's satisfaction, apparently) is how do nations become "good" or "bad"? Nations are collectives which, with respect to other national collectives, pursue interests. Individuals make moral decisions (or not) but when you speak of the collective of millions, "good" or "evil" do not seem quite the right terms.

There were many individuals belonging to the ruling German Nazi Party who made horrendously evil decisions and a few million individuals who executed the orders--all and each responsible. The state of Germany, representing the German people, can't be held guilty the same way that individual Nazis can. The State is an abstraction, as are "a people" to some extent. "The State" can not be taken out and shot after being found guilty of crimes against humanity. But individuals--responsible actors--can be tried, convicted, and executed.

We can locate individuals who are good or bad actors, like those Israeli's who choose to build houses and barns on land where just previously Palestinians had lived, or Palestinians who choose to commit suicide aboard a bus used mostly by Israelis. The Israeli settlers are causing a slow death of Palestinians, as opposed to the much quicker death of Israeli's on the bus. We can locate a source of goodness or badness in particular policies written by particular persons, like a policy of tacit support for boundary-crossing settlers or explosives-bearing bus riders. We can locate goodness and badness in the behavior or directives of leaders, from David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) or Chaim Weizmann (1914-1952), or Golda Meir (1898-1978) on to Benjamin Netanyahu. We should include Harry Truman and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.***

Perhaps the most prominent designer of Zionism, Theodor Herzl also known in Hebrew as Chozeh HaMedinah (lit. "Visionary of the State") should be named as a responsible agent.

There are Israeli individuals and Israeli political parties who oppose the expansionary settlers, oppose the military policies of the Israeli defense ministry, and wish to bring about a lasting peaceful arrangement.

"Israel" contains them all.

The existence of Israel, as a state -- whether a 'Jewish' state or not, can not be undone at this point, except by some monstrous act of invasion or nuclear detonation, which would also harm Israel's neighbors.

States, whether imposed by declaration and war, or created by partition of territories (Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India), are self- and other- justified. South Sudan was created by partition but it is unclear at the moment whether they have sufficient recognition and self justification to persist.

Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, et al all have arbitrary boundaries. Much of Africa has equally arbitrary boundaries--the British and French (mainly) drew them to suit themselves, just like they did in the Middle East. Israel isn't unique in having a wandering border. Europe has lots of erasures and redrawn lines; so does the United States (mostly at somebody else's expense).

Israel obtained its West Bank opportunity and its West Bank problem when it captured the territory from Jordan in 1967.

*** "The Balfour Declaration essentially states the endorsement of his fellow Cabinet ministers of the partition of a separate land for Israel in the Palestinian region then under British rule. It read, in part, "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to faciliate the achievement of this object..." This is particularly significant because it has been popular to suggest a Jewish national home in Uganda up to this point."

That's your conclusion. If you want to argue against any of the facts in my post, go ahead.

This is just naivete. We're not a semantical distinction away from peace. You cite to an agreement reached over 20 years ago that has meant nothing in reducing violence. In 2000, it was made very clear that the Palestinians didn't want peace at the Camp David Summit — Hanover

From your deeply biased perspective, sure. And from the deeply biased perspective of the Palestinians the blame is all Israel's. The vast majority of analysts do not paint things in such cartoonish terms.

This conflates two issues: (1) the Palestinian objection to the reference of the land as Jewish and (2) secular Jews objection to having Jewish theology imposed on an otherwise secular nation — Hanover

There are two issues here and I've been careful in my wording to try not to conflate them but to show how they're related. I didn't expect agreement but at least it highlights the complexities here that you continuously seem to want to gloss over.

Camp David fell apart largely due to the right of return issue, which was the Palestinians arguing that every descendant of every displaced Palestinian after Israeli independence be permitted to return to Israel (not just to Gaza and the West Bank). The numbers of such people are now in the millions. Israel could not accept that condition as it would essentially cede the land right back to the Palestinians and destroy the character of the state of Israel. — Hanover

Again, it's not as simple as you make out. There was room for negotiation.

At Camp David, the Palestinians maintained their traditional demand that the right of return be implemented. They demanded that Israel recognize the right of all refugees who so wished to settle in Israel, but to address Israel's demographic concerns,they promised that the right of return would be implemented via a mechanism agreed upon by both sides, which would try to channel a majority of refugees away from the option of returning to Israel. According to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, some of the Palestinian negotiators were willing to privately discuss a limit on the number of refugees who would be allowed to return to Israel

Link

See also:

In 2002, Sari Nusseibeh, an academic and former representative of the PLO in Jerusalem controversially proposed a settlement where Palestinian refugees would only be able to return to a Palestinian state.

Also, the unofficial "Geneva Accord" peace framework, proposed by former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo in 2003, relinquished the full right of return. — BBC

So your jump to this.

The Palestinian objection to having Israel desginated "Jewish" is because their objective is to make it a Palestinian nation and they won't accept anything less. That is to say, this objection by the Palestinians is not semantical. It's a clear declaration that they don't want non-Palestinian control of the land because they beleive all the land is theirs

It's as I've said all along: They don't want a two state solution. They want to control over the whole country. — Hanover

Is a jump into more cartoonish falsity. Your strategy here seems to be to take the most biased interpretation you can of a minimal number of facts, ignore all nuance, and run with that as far as you can. Of course, that will end up making the Palestinians look bad, which sadly seems to be one your objectives here.

It seems obvious to me. — Hanover

I wonder why. Anyway, what is obvious is that the right of return is an important issue for the Palestinians as the principle is based on the UN declaration of human rights and protected under international law, but it's a negotiating position not an absolute unequivocal or unnuanced demand.

The fact that no-one in the immediate vicinity batted an eyelid at this execution is definitely shocking. But you're using the same strategy that @Hanover sometimes has: employ a minimal number of facts to make sweeping statements about an entire country or people. Would it be too much to ask that we could get beyond that?

The idea of a race is a bogus category. So there is very little point trying to pretend that "semitic" means a thing it don't mean. No one self identifies as "semitic" in the racial version of the meaning.
"Antisemitic" is a word used by people who think "jew" is a viable category against people that don't like 'jews'.
It acts in a way to justify the unjustifiable land grab of a religious group of people who pretend that they have some sort of prior claim on the territory of Palestine, and have used that claim, with the collusion of France, UK and the USA to colonise that land to the detriment of the people who have lived there continuously since time immemorial, whose property rights have been taken away form them; have been incarcerated, packed into trucks and 're-located' and interned. Moreover, have had even more land lost through conquest of "Israeli" forces. They now live in the world's largest prison whose nearest analogue is the Warsaw Ghetto; called Gaza.

"Antisemitic" is a word used by people who think "jew" is a viable category against people that don't like 'jews'. — charleton

If Jews don't exist, who is the target of the prejudice that goes by the name of anti-semitism? This looks like a way of saying that anti-Jewish prejudice does not exist.

I agree that race is irrelevant, but that doesn't go against the standard meaning of "Jew": the Jews are an ethnic group. And to be anti-semitic is to be prejudiced against Jews.

I agree that race is irrelevant, but that doesn't go against the standard meaning of "Jew": the Jews are an ethnic group. And to be anti-semitic is to be prejudiced against Jews. — jamalrob

I would say "ethnic group" is the best way to describe Jews too, but then what is ethnicity? Within ethnic groups you can have shared ethno-racial as well as ethno-religious (and various other) characteristics and there are those who believe Jews exhibit some of the former.

e.g. from http://www.jpost.com/Enviro-Tech/Jews-A-religious-group-people-or-race

'“Jewish” was never a category for race in the US Census, Ostrer notes, even though genetic studies “would seem to refute this..."'

The idea of a race is a bogus category. So there is very little point trying to pretend that "semitic" means a thing it don't mean. No one self identifies as "semitic" in the racial version of the meaning."Antisemitic" is a word used by people who think "jew" is a viable category against people that don't like 'jews'. — charleton

I don't follow the logic here. For example, whether race exists or not, racists exist, and they're a real problem. Also, you don't need to go down this route to make the point in the second paragraph. There are real anti-semites out there and the accusation of anti-semitism is also sometimes used for political purposes. It's not like there's any mutual exclusivity here.

I would say "ethnic group" is the best way to describe Jews too, but then what is ethnicity? Within ethnic groups you can have shared ethno-racial as well as ethno-religious (and various other) characteristics and there are those who believe Jews exhibit some of the former. — Baden

Yes, although in this discussion I think it probably doesn't matter. Ethnicity can be about shared cultural, historical, linguistic or religious practices and affiliations. For this debate I just wanted to point out that it doesn't follow from a lack of shared racial characteristics that there is no such people as the Jews. Incidentally, it still does not follow if we also find a lack of universal religious observance.

Semitic is a language group. What makes Jews unique is their ability to make a golem.

This might sound horribly imperialist and not too dissimilar from the Europeans said when they cut up Africa, but, given evidence that a nation, given its own government, will act upon its citizens unfairly (in ways its citizens don't want to be treated) and undemocratically, is it correct to grant that nation self-determination? Is that, further, an intelligent decision? I'm not supporting the claim that this would be the case, were Palestine fully recognized by the Israeli government. Just bringing the question up for discussion, since it almost came up and I thought it was interesting.

On a different note, I think that, fundamentally, Israelis don't trust Palestine a state. I'm sure a lot personally know many Palestinians and get along with them, but when every non-Palestinian Israeli person over 21 in the country has spent at least 3 years (during one of the most formative parts of their life) fighting Palestine as the general enemy, it is a high hope that they might otherwise. Likewise, when people live in fear with the memory terror attacks, it is unlikely that trust will be granted (whether that be an intelligent decision or not). As such it seems to me that, whether this reflects reality or not, many Israelis (I have many Israeli friends, and have visited the country a half dozen times) truly believe that a Palestinian government, as its core, fundamentally believes that Israel, as a liberal, democratic, Jewish state, should not exist. I can't speak at all about the Palestinian perspective. Nonetheless, even on this one side, achieving the trust necessary to give Palestine its own government, including an official and recognized military, the right to weapons, and no internal Israeli security checks, seems unrealistic (again, I am not speaking about whether the Palestinians are or aren't to blame for this, although I'm sure that terror attacks don't help), especially being surrounded by Gaza on one side and the West Bank on the other. Many Israelis use the giving of Gaza as reference, claiming that they gave the land to the Palestinians, and now it is a hotspot of terror from whence most of the missiles emanate. I'm quite positive that the average Israeli is not willing to accept a two-state solution because they express sentiments similar to Hanover's: they would love a two-state solution– the terror scares them shitless and they want nothing but for it to stop– but they don't think that a Palestinian government could ever not be associated with terror and the destruction of Israel. Also, from a military perspective (and remember that essentially all non-Palestinian Israelis have served in the army), relenting the said territories is very tactically risky. Invasion through Palestine by any Arab allies would be unbelievably easy, and even if Israelis trusted a Palestinian state, they likely wouldn't trust that it could keep out neighboring countries looking for chinks in its armor (it'd be like Belgium in WWI).

I think it's interesting that mention of Jerusalem hasn't even come up. It is a non-trivial issue. To most of us, who are not particularly immersed in the issue, the city seems of little significance, but to proponents of each religion, Islam, Judaism, and even Christianity, access to the city is important. While much of Israel is quite secular, the percentage of the population that deeply identifies with the need to access the Western Wall is quite large as well (especially in the religious and immigrant-Jew communities). I do not think that this city, or even religion at all, is the only, or the most important element of the conflict, but it is also not irrelevant. The question of "rightfully theirs" gets very convoluted at this stage; Jerusalem was the center of the ancient world and different nations across time have made it theirs. However, entitlement is a serious ill, and religious or not, I don't think either side is willing to relieve their sense of it in this particular city. Solutions such as a shared city have been proposed, but I think there is a degree of Illiad-esque pride at hand, too. I predict that even if nationalistic two-state solutions can be realized a lot of people will start acting like 4-year-olds very quickly over Jerusalem– it's almost like a time machine back to when people thought and acted more primitively...

For the record, I think that Baden has had the most lucid and balanced arguments regarding the conflict.

I think you missed their point, jamalrob. You can't be anti-semitic or anti-jewish because these categories are nonsensical. If something does not exist, you can't be against that something. It's all so simple! — Πετροκότσυφας

I would suggest that a fairly high form of racism is to deny the existence of the race altogether. Two things are obvious: (1) the specific demarcation of what constitutes a Jew (or any race for that matter) can be nebulous and variable depending upon who is doing the defining and (2) there are certain people who are unequivocally Jewish. There is no particular board that makes a boat a boat.

If you define yourself by race that makes you a racist. Racists attract other racists. That does not mean that the category is viable or useful.

You haven't addressed what I said. If you're only in the discussion to spout your prejudice, don't bother posting again.

When I was a child I found early on that both my parents had a thing about Jews. They seemed oddly unaware that I had friends at school who were Jewish. My Mum was middle-class diffident about it: 'Very nice people,' she'd say of a couple down the street, and then with a certain emphasis, 'Jews, you know.' My Dad was more straightforward and said 'their' cooking smelled unpleasant; I still have in my memory a rude song about 'Crikey Moses, king of the Jews' which he taught me before I was old enough to grasp its meaning.

I was pretty nervous when I brought Jewish friends home, but actually my parents were nice as pie to them, which seriously puzzled me. Nevertheless my dad refused to speak to the Jewish next-door neighbours for over a decade because they built an extension against his objection. He grew our privet hedge about a mile high, making it terribly ugly, in an attempt to block out their light.

In my early teens I read James Baldwin who I thought was electrifying, and I thought more seriously about race. It seemed to me right to think of my Dad as a racist, and my Mum as a fence-sitter. Later of course I would read some sociology and grasp the slipperiness of classification by so-called race, but by then the notion of racism, and the fact that it helped to describe something my father was, and I was not, was thoroughly lodged in me.

Now I'm an oldish git with Jewish friends (ranging from Zionist to practising to appalled Palestinian sympathisers) and to be honest, I'm a supporter of the Palestinian cause but don't agree with anti-Israeli boycotts. I suspect the worm of what I find it useful to call 'anti-Semitism' is entwined in there, not that boycotters are anti-Semitic, but that some anti-Israelis aren't confronting their own anti-jewish prejudices, prejudices which aren't going to have dissipated in a generation of earnest people like me. I've been to central Asian countries, for instance, with much worse human rights records than Israel who aren't boycotted, and I think there should be consistency about such a thing. It's a melancholy fact that some right-wing Zionists (for it did after all used to be a socialist cause as well) have begun to conflate criticism of Israel's actions with prejudice against Jews, but in my heart I know some of my fellow lefties are prejudiced in ways they don't want to confront.

Well, this is very personal, but just to say...let's not be glib about race and racism and Jews and Israel.

Nice post McD, and quite familiar to me.

I recently noticed Peter Hitchens arguing for the use of the term Judeophobia to describe present-day anti-Jewish sentiment, to distinguish it from the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. I agree that the prejudices are different today, but personally I think the term anti-Semitism is fine, because as it is we use it variously to describe, for example, the racialism of the Nazis as well as the religious bigotry of the Russian pogroms.

I think it is possible to accept that 'racist' is a meaningful term without also accepting that 'race' is a meaningful concept. In recent years I have become fairly persuaded by some of the scientific arguments that the concept of 'race' is unscientific, and in fact was only invented in the last century or two.

Given that, we can still think of a racist action as one that treats one or more people badly because the action's author has decided those people belong to a category of the author's own invention, and the author dislikes people that belong to that invented category, or regards them as inferior. Hence identifying an action as racist does not imply acceptance that race is meaningful, but only that the author of the action thinks it is meaningful.

I prefer to talk in terms of racist actions rather than racist people, because I believe that racism, as part of a more general rejection of the Other, is instinctive to humans (as it is to nearly all animals), and is reduced to the extent that people become educated and civilized. Some people have been far more successful than others in liberating themselves from such innate prejudices, but I doubt anybody has been entirely successful.

So I get the argument that race 'doesn't exist' to speak loosely. The same arguments for race do not apply when speaking about Jews. The issue is nothing to do with whether Jews can be defined as a race, rather it makes sense to look at how one defines a particular individual as a Jew.
Traditional way is that if your mother is Jewish or you convert to Judaism then you are a Jew. There was never a claim that Jews could be identified genetically or biologically. Jews are members of a religion.

Because of relatively low amount of converts and the long history many Jews do share certain genetic traits, and a cultural history but it's quite diverse and depends a lot on where they are from.

To say that race doesn't exist therefore Jews don't exist is completely mistaken.

I didn't notice anybody saying that Jews don't exist, but I don't think it can be defined solely in terms of religion.

One difficulty with trying to define Judaism solely in terms of religion is that what defines a religion is almost as energetically debated a topic as this one. Another is that, even under a very broad definition of religion, it would have trouble encompassing non-religious or even anti-religious people that I believe would self-identify as Jewish - such as Stephen Fry, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen. It would also exclude people that are generally considered as Jewish despite being members of a religion that explicitly makes claims that are in conflict with those of the Jewish religion, such as Felix Mendelssohn.

My impression is that in modern usage, the term 'Jewish', when used positively, refers to people that self-identify as Jews. There is a strong correlation between such self-identification and religious practices, cultural practices and ancestry, but none of those three on their own accurately match the group. When used negatively by an anti-Jewish person, it refers to anybody that the person doesn't like and that they think of as Jewish. I don't think there would be hope of getting any coherent definition from such a person as to what they meant by Jewish. They would likely contradict themselves from one day to the next, as well as contradicting each other.

I didn't notice anybody saying that Jews don't exist — andrewk

It was claimed by charleton in this post:

Yes I wouldn't define them based on religion. Most Jews would determine whether someone is Jewish based on conversion or descent (for orthodox only maternal descent is used, other traditions allow paternal). These are the necessary conditions, it's not enough for someone to decide that they are Jewish.

Anyway the main point was not to define them, rather just the claim that Jew was never intended to be a natural category so claiming that like race it isn't one, is off the mark.

Yes I wouldn't define them based on religion. — shmik

Yet the high court in Israel did. A Jew who converted to Christianity lost rights only reserved for Jewish citizens of Israel.

A necessary but not sufficient condition, maybe?

A necessary but not sufficient condition, maybe? — Baden

Who Is a Jew?

There are also disputes concerning who exactly is included in the Law of Return, since the 1950 law did not define who is a Jew for the purposes of immigration.

The first major challenge to the law came in 1962 with the Brother Daniel case. Brother Daniel, born Oswald Rufeisen, was a Polish Jew who converted to Catholicism during the Holocaust. He later became a Carmelite monk, and in this position saved many Jews during the Holocaust. When Brother Daniel applied to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that he was ineligible because the Law of Return does not include Jews who practice another religion.

Then in 1969, the Israeli Supreme Court in the Shalit case ruled that a child born in Israel to a Jewish Israeli father and non-Jewish mother could be registered as Jewish in Israel’s Population Registry. Since this ruling runs counter to the traditional Jewish legal definition of a Jew–someone born to a Jewish mother–tremendous controversy ensued, which led to the 1970 amendment of the Law of Return.

This amendment expanded the right of return to include the child or grandchild of a Jew, and the spouse of a child or grandchild of a Jew. For the purposes of this law, “Jew” was defined as someone who has a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism, and is not a member of another religion. — Myjewishlearning.com

Since we can't even determine when a chair is a chair, how do you expect we'll be able to determine when a Jew is a Jew?

The word "Jew" (like all words) will vary by context, with legal definitions, religious definitions, vernacular definitions in various countries, and racist definitions all varying. I think Hitler (conversation over, Hitler's been cited) defined Jews as having any grandparent Jewish. That definition might not have been shared by many, but it was of critical importance if you were so designated.

None of this diminishes anyone's Jewishness. It's just points out the inherent ambiguity of words.

Since we can't even determine when a chair is a chair, how do you expect we'll be able to determine when a Jew is a Jew? — Hanover

Persuasive definitions of course, one of which was codified into law in Israel. Just pointing out that apparently a lot of Jewish Israelis in 1970 thought religious Judaism was more important than simple descent, because regardless of descent, if you convert to another religion you're no longer a Jew according to that law.

It's just really complicated. To an Orthodox Jew, once a Jew, always a Jew, which would mean that a Jew who coverts to Christianity remains a Jew. http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1269075/jewish/Is-a-Jew-Who-Converts-Still-Jewish.htm.

I wonder then how many Jews are out there who converted around the time of Jesus. I guess they'd still be Jews.

Of course, the law in Israel seems to vary from that as you've pointed out. I'd also point out that further complications have arisen when a non-Jew converts through the Reform movement, the Orthodox won't recognize that conversion.

All I know is that I'm a true blue Jew, which is all I need to know.

I wonder then how many Jews are out there who converted around the time of Jesus. I guess they'd still be Jews. — Hanover

That's a very good point, with an interesting historical context. All the original Jesus followers were Jews. From what I've read on the early years of Christianity - mostly John Shelby Spong - the Jews who followed Jesus very much considered themselves Jews, and considered their religion either a part of the Jewish one, or a natural evolution of it.

Tensions arose between the Jesus-following Jews and the non-Jesus-following Jews, which escalated and I think the former got kicked out, in some sense, after a few decades when the non-Jesus-following Jews gained enough power in the institutional religion, and were motivated enough to take that step.

Just think what a different world it would have been if that had not happened, and Christianity had remained a part of Judaism. All those centuries of persecution, predicated on Jews being 'other' and 'Christ-killers', might not have happened. On the other hand, maybe not: being part of the same umbrella religion doesn't seem to stop radical Wahhabi Muslims from killing Shiite Muslims.

The definition that, once a Jew, you remain a Jew unless you convert to another religion works for me, because it allows Woody Allen to still be considered one - since he appears to be an atheist. It rules out Felix Mendelssohn, who was a Christian, but his Jewish heritage is not a major part of people's perception of him.

However, conversion to Christianity didn't save people from the hatred of Jew-haters like Richard Wagner or the Nazis.

To be fair (because I take your statement as a bit of a dig at Israel), the law of return is for non-citizens, not a right reserved only for some citizens as you're implying.

Anyway, if Jew is defined for the purpose of a law I don't think it counts as the definition of a Jew, it's defined for a utility. For instance, US Supreme Court defined Jews as a race to include them in anti discrimination laws.

EDIT: Also as @Hanover mentioned according to the religion Jews who convert are still part of the Jewish religion. So the consideration to exclude the Jews who converted would probably be based on reasons outside of whether they were technically part of the Jewish religion.

Except that there isn't any consistent political view shared by Jews. In fact, the primary source of the debate on who is a Jew are the debates among Jews. It's also not like there's a single monolithic political view among Jewish Israelis.