In my personal circle Jews don’t come up but Palestine and Israel certainly do. Why? Because 1) they were in the news and we discuss current events and 2) being in the tech industry Israel comes up frequently. Why is this an issue?

Exactly. Israel/Palestine comes up. But not Jews. It's a strange topic for a local neighborhood group. You can deduce that from reflecting on your own interactions.

Further, FB found it necessary to stop discussions about Jews on that group. Now, we can cook up any number of conspiracies about how any mention of Jews is like discussing fight club, or the Illuminati, and that's why FB instructed the group to stop discussing it. Or we can deduce the obvious. That the group, that would normally not be expected to be discussing Jews, had some fairly distasteful discussions about Jews.

FB is not a model of good moderation by a long shot. But given the strangeness of the topic in a local neighborhood group, we can deduce that FB probably got it right in this case.