I can't speak for Raoul, and am talking now mostly of Arab interest groups, and other leftist organizations across the world, but I know that the excuse that one is "Anti-Zionist" and not "anti-Jew" gets a little weak under close examination.

Does anyone think that if, say, Egypt or Jordan had somehow "occupied" by military force the area that is now Israel, that all the Arab nations and pretty much every pseudo-Socialist European nation would currently be strongly aligned against them? Lebanon has been occupied by Syria for years, and I would bet not one person in thirty even is aware of it. Oddly, after the occupation, the other Arab nations did not band together in three wars of extermination to liberate Lebanon.

A speculative quiz. If we had not engaged Saddam in the first Gulf War, and he had taken over Kuwait, all the other Arab and Muslim nations would have:

A) Kept their heads down and pretty much stayed out of it, hoping they weren't next on the list.

D) Declared that the Lion of Babylon had finally wrested his rightful territory from the Western-aligned Kuwaiti rulers.

C) Declared eternal opposition to Saddam for occupying someone else's territory and started paying people to blow up buses in Baghdad.

I'm sorry, but the hostility toward Israel is about Israel being home to Jews, and always has been.