Before modern Israel was established, did some Christians and Muslims claim that...

[Boojatta]

the fact that Jewish people were scattered in various nations but had no nation of their own was evidence that the Jewish people were cursed by God?

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. Probably a mix of "cursed by God" and "because it's necessary for prophecy to be fulfilled"

The "curse" faction believes that God was pissed at the Jews for rejecting His son JC, so He let the pagan heathen Romans kick them out in 70 AD. The "prophecy faction" believes that scriptures indicating that Jerusalem would be controlled by Gentiles until the "Last Days", and then God would restore Israel, and start the countdown to the "end of the world as we know it".

[Ozymanithrax]

2. Absoltuely...Jews were accused of murdering Christ for much of their history...

Until the French Revolution, most countries where they lived did not recognize them as citizens. The were often expelled, their homes and property taken.

They were often accused of eating the children of Christians and Muslims.

The Germans were hardly the first to try and kill them. The Russian Pogroms of the later 19th and early 20th century created hundreds of thousands of refugees.

This was all religious based, because Jews were (a) considered cursed because they did not accept the Messiah; and (b) murdered Christ.

[Igel]

3. Cursed, punished--it's all in the focus.

And it's not just non-Jews that believe this (although the precise reasons adduced vary).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta

If you believe in an omnipotent God that cares about his chosen people in a hands-on kind of way--whether Xian, Jewish, or Muslim--then calamities have to be seen as having some Larger Purpose. Otherwise they're to be considered random events, which would contradict either the hands-on or omnipotent bits of most variants of the basic assumption.