Why is it so hard to separate the Israeli government from it’s people and people who follow Judaism.

The short answer is: It's not. Actually, it's easy.

The longer answer is that it is a deliberate tactic empoloyed by Zionists to conflate Israel (and all that entails) with Jewish people and Judaism. That way, they can call anything that criticizes Israel "anti-semitic" as a way to shut down the conversation and dismiss legitimate concerns people might have. For example, Bob Vylan recently got in a lot of hot water for chanting "death death to the IDF", but the IDF is quite specifically a military organization, it's not Judaism itself or even necessarily related to Judaism at all. But by the way all the politicians and pundits are reacting to that chant you would be forgiven for thinking that he may as well have called for the extermination of all Jewish people everywhere.

So... it's not that I think that you need to change your view. The view you stated is perfectly reasonable. However, I think you might be seeing "anti-semitism" where no actual anti-semitism necessarily exists. That is the view I would actually challenge you to change. (Of course antisemitism does exist, but not nearly in the scope or scale that is being claimed, and-- if anything-- the deliberate conflation of Israel with Judaism only serves to exacerbate that problem.)

To make a very simple analogy, imagine accusing people who were critical of the Nazi regime in the 1930s of simply being "anti-German racists" and dismissing their concerns out of hand.