There is no good/acceptable reason at all. Not including Bitcoin transactions goes directly against what Bitcoin is about. I am glad you see that you cannot mine here in good conscience and I hope other miners follow suit or Antpool change their ways (either is acceptable to me  ).

Some people claim its because of the great firewall but truth is its all about maximizing their profits and getting as many blocks as quickly possible. Not including transactions is seen as being a quicker way to relay found blocks but other pools like kano and ck process full blocks quicker than antpool do empty blocks. The other thing with antpool (and others) is the SPV mining too. I hope pool miners on antpool experience delays in paying/receiving BTC so they can see the effect mining empty blocks has. Funnily enough Antpool doesn't even include their own transactions in their blocks