Question for Shlomo Sand followers

Someone in the Mondoweiss comments section recently said the following, typifying a train of thought that many anti-Zionists have evidently picked up from Shlomo Sand:

. . .Jewish-ness has been perverted from a *Religious Indentity* into some mythical ethnic, semi racial, semi genetic nationality. You’ve invented a ‘people’ catagory for yourselves beyond religion –one that does not exist and is unidentifable by any traditonal defintions of ethnic or distinct people.

The comments thread is about to close down there, and I just thought of a question which I think very concisely pierces this nonsense, so I will post it here. Here is what I would ask of anyone who thinks the above is a good point and that a "religious identity" automatically excludes nation-hood or people-hood. The Jews originally had a monarch, territory, an army, civil and criminal law-enforcement, and everything else associated with nation-hood or people-hood. Was Judaism not a "religion" in those days?