General Discussion

We probably should have a better term for secular Jews, but it's a complicated history and we don't.

And that completely ignores the history of the last several thousand years. The Jews were blamed for the Black Death for example. There is a great deal of reason to be explicitly clear when talking about this subject to avoid confusion whether the confusion is legitimate or in less than good faith. You seem to assume it's just the later.

Jews as a whole are not Israel and not responsible for Israel's actions. Not even all Israelis are. Confusing the two is what leads to things like the bigot in Boulder throwing Molotov cocktails at old Jewish people, or the guy who shot and killed two random people at a Jewish event.

As I said before I don't think that's what the rabbi was doing because I think by default he would be talking from the religious perspective, but it leads to people misreading because unfortunately that's been primed by centuries of bigotry.