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If the Jews were behaving like sovereign citizens and (e.g.) refusing to pay taxes or follow laws, then "persecuting the Jews is no worse than a conflict with a foreign state" might be somewhat defensible.
But it sounds like you're saying "Yeah you pay French taxes and follow French laws and have lived in France all your life, but you don't follow French culture, so you shouldn't get the game-theoretic protections of being part of France". If you agree that (e.g.) Mormons deserve to live without persecution, I feel like that should also extend to Jews.
Jews in the middle ages often did live under their own laws and pay taxes separately while being citizens of the same state as gentiles.
I suspect "often" is doing some weaseling here. After reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_the_Jews_in_Europe I see exactly one example, which was in the town of Altona
Do you think it was common for Jews to pay less in taxes than ordinary citizens? Can you provide an example of a kingdom where this happened? Do you think in kingdoms where this didn't happen (I'm guessing the vast majority) Jews shouldn't have received the same rights as other citizens?
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The Middle Ages were radically different. Even disputing a Christian doctrine in a Catholic country could you have killed. Apostasy in a Muslim country would have you killed, and apostasy in a Jewish city as a Jew would have you made anathema with the threat of being killed. Today is much different than the Middle Ages. I’m merely asserting that the Jews as a whole did not face more threat than everyone else, because everyone else was dying in wars and starving to death (outside the “urban” center).
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This is of course perfectly coherent and sensible to essentially anybody before 1789.
The idea of nationhood as citizenship is a liberal innovation. And frankly, jury is still out on whether that was a good idea or not. Let alone if it's compatible with any national culture at all.
Not sure this is right. What about Hobbes? Surely the relevant point here is whether Jews were under the French state in a similar manner to Frenchmen, not whether they were considered part of the nation of Frenchmen, which doesn't seem especially relevant. They submitted to the leviathan, paid its taxes, followed its laws etc. so why should they not also benefit from its protection?
What about Hobbes? He's one of the earliest of Liberals and Leviathan, though it justifies this position very well in a way I personally believe, was an extremely controversial book that earned him the contempt of his royalist friends, anglicans and Catholics. He is by no means "essentially anybody".
Protection in exchange for taxes doesn't require hobbes, it's just feudalism. Earlier, even. The world's oldest profession... for men.
As long as the jews or goths or cumans pay taxes and obey the king, they should not be treated as a foreign army or persecuted by the rest of the king's subjects. One doesn't need liberalism to justify this arrangement.
Why?
I mean it, explain as you would to a catholic ruler why you shouldn't persecute those who have no kinship, cultural ties to your realm and whom you don't even share a religion with.
Why not just kill them and take their stuff or convert them except that it might be impractical at the moment?
The catholic church explicitly extended protection and tolerance to the Jews, something not extended to other religious minorities who were persecuted. The only reason Jews could exist in catholic and orthodox Europe was that they were Jews and not something else.
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Mutual benefit. Loyalty without competition (as in, a jew cannot replace you as the new king like a catholic could). Honoring your word. You're asking why anyone would act morally. I doubt they do it because of 'cultural ties'.
Just because a policy is ruthless does not make it beneficial to the realm. The dutch and americans soaked up all the religious freaks nobody wanted and it made them rich. Has that king ever heard of the goose with the golden eggs?
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