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I understand that saying Israelis can't feel empathy is obviously not true, but I think it is a somewhat understandable exaggeration, since it's kinda hard to protest a state but not it's people.

People do do it (it's what I'm doing rn) but it is also understandable that people consider the native of a certain nations to be responsible for it's states actions.

It is a bit hypocritical though, as for example we definitely don't hold North Koreans responsible for Kim's actions, but we do sort of think Chinese people are more free to protest their government than North Koreans, but I don't think we assign the Chinese with a whole lot of agency. Then Russians? I think (and I realise this is my opinion about the opinions of others) we think Russians have a bit more but similar levels of freedom to China when it comes to criticising the government. Perhaps we also think Russia is so large and basically education in some parts is so poor it's also a contributing factor.

But Israel... ? I think everyone at least used to consider Israel a rather democratic country. So we assign more moral agency to Israelites for their state's actions compared to the others I mentioned.

But you are right in that a people is not the same as the state with the same name.

I clash with Lemmys Russians all the time, but I still quite enjoy this song:

Sting - Russians

I can't help but defaulting to generalising and othering sometimes, because we're all people, and we can't be perfect all the time. It does mean, however, that we can always strive for moral perfection, despite knowing we will never actually achieve it.