On Being A Leftist And A Zionist

In the May issue of the webzine Zeek, Jay Michaelson discusses what it's like to be a leftist and a Zionist. Here's one part of the article I thought especially fine:

And why the focus on Israel? How can a few crying Arab mothers on TV cause people to think that the situation in Palestine is more important than those in Tibet, Chechnya, Congo, and Kurdistan ?. Millions of Tibetans, Chechnyans, Rwandans, and Kurds have been massacred; millions of monasteries and mosques obliterated; entire villages slaughtered or gassed. France and Spain, which both ceaselessly criticize Israel, occupy the Basque territory, banning the Basque independence movements. America has yet to pay a dime of reparations either to the Africans it exiled and enslaved or to the Native Americans it slaughtered and betrayed. The Moroccans oppress the Berbers, and carry on a slave trade. The Sudanese Muslims massacre the Southern Sudanese Christians and Animists. The Hashemite minority in Jordan discriminates against the Palestinian majority. Brazilian elites and transnational corporations destroy the lands of indigenous peoples in the Amazon; global oil companies poison whole tribes in Nigeria, stealing their land and resources. Britain continues its occupation of Northern Ireland. China tortures monks and nuns. The list goes on, but the Left is fixated on a few villages on the West Bank of the Jordan, the population of which would all fit into the Bronx.