alt Hacker News> economic role that they chose to assume
The only choice they had which would have allowed them assume any other role was conversion to Islam.
> no evidence that this ever happened
There is obviously evidence and there several major Jewish or Samaritan revolts until the Romans lost Palestine in the 600s with the last revolt being quite brutal.
Of course the scale of expulsions, forced conversions and massacres is not really known but the region was almost certainly majority Christian by the time the Muslims got there
> there was a huge jewish diaspora before that revolt and even before the 1st century revolt
There is no strong evidence of that either (depending on how one defines “huge” of course)
Islam allowed jews to own land, just like how it allowed christians to own land.
if there were several jewish revolts until the 600s that is evidence that they did not result in significant expulsions. the fact that the region became majority christian is not evidence of a major expulsion of jews and subsequent replacement by christians, likely they mostly converted just like how most christians would end up converting to islam. In any case it wasn't muslims who expelled them so they can't take it out on the indigenous muslims of the west bank.
there are records of jewish presence across the medditerranean region and the near east for centuries prior to the first roman jewish war