i asked him if there could be any religious belief of the Christians behind backing the jews?
he said nope.
I know when I was a boy, the church we attended sent money to some hard core religous group in Israel. Most evangelical christians are firmly behind the jewish occupation. According to Christian prophecies, the Temple of Solomon (PBUH) has to be rebuilt as a pre-cursor to the return of Jesus (PBUH). Since there is currently a mosque on that site, and Muslims are not about to say "Sure, go ahead, tear it down. We don't need it anyway." , alot of money is directed towards extremist groups.
But anyway, back to the topic...I have known many jews in my life. With varying degrees of "jewiness" . Most I have known are not religous at all. Or at most, they would celebrate chanucah and christmas, maybe have a big dinner on Passover. Maybe, just maybe, they would show up to a temple on their high holy days.
About Israel, when I was in high school, I dated an Israeli girl who was visiting relatives for a year. Oh, btw, not a muslim at the time. She said many times that israelis don't really get jews in america. She said that no one could understand why jews would want to live anywhere except in their "homeland". Also, that many back "home" doubted the "jewishness" of their american cousins.
We have to remember that Jew is both a religion and an ethnicity. I think Jewish law is that if the mother is Jewish, so is the offspring, regardless of the ethnicity or religion of the father. It is my personal belief that Allah (swt) is not done with these particular sons of Ibrahim (PBUH). What other tribe of people have survived to this point still fairly intact with their beliefs and practices?