Because people are anti-semitic. In this particular case, you have a muslim majority country on one side of the equation.

In case you really need this much of a primer: (some) Muslims don't like Jews because they're following Muhammad's lead. Specifically, Muhammad had this to say about Jews in one of the Hadith:

> The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, 'O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Only the Gharkad tree would not do that, because it is one of the trees of the Jews.

Of course the Jews (for their part) say that Muhammad was a false prophet. On balance though, they also say this about Jesus.

I think it is hard to say that it is entirely anti-semitism and unrelated to what happened in Mandatory Palestine.

Attacks on Jews by Muslims LONG predate Mandatory Palestine.

LONG predate? Sure, instances of Muslims attacking Jews certainly do, just as instances of Jews attacking Muslims certainly predates Mandatory Palestine by thousands of years.

But in the centuries preceding Mandatory Palestine, there was not a sizable Jewish population in the area.

> Jews attacking Muslims certainly predates Mandatory Palestine by thousands of years.

Probably not, since Islam is not thousands of years old.

Thousand*, my fault for making it plural.

A mostly pointless nitpick on my part.

Regardless though, I'm not sure "Jews weren't being attacked because there weren't many Jews to attack" is much of an argument.

"The Nakba is not the reason for animosity against Israel because there were attacks against Jews prior to the Nakba" doesn't strike me as a solid argument either.

Really? If Muslims were attacking Jews for being Jews before the Nakba, then obviously Muslims disliking Jews does not lie at the feet of the Nakba. That is like the most solid argument I've ever heard.

Attacks by Christians against Muslims long predate 9/11, but that doesn’t mean that attacks by certain specific predominantly Christian groups against certain specific Muslims, particularly in and around Central and South Asia starting shortly after 9/11 were not motivated by the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda.

If you can accept that, the same thing with “events related to Mandatory Palestine” in place of 9/11, Muslims in place of Christians, and Jews in place of Muslims should not be much of a stretch.