Tibet

In 1951 China invaded sovereign independent Tibet and occupied it. Many thousands of Tibetans were massacred and their religious shrines were destroyed or burnt. From the supposedly anti-imperialist Chinese this was a terrible irony. Since then China incorporated Tibet and has suppressed its native culture with massive human rights abuses. Since Tibet is far from anywhere else and is not strategic, noone has come to the aid of the Tibetans.
Fast forward to 2008 and the Olympic Games are due to take place in Beijing in August. Now the Tibetans are using this opportunity to rise up against Chinese control and bring their plight to the attention of the world, as they did yesterday at the Olympic torch lighting ceremony in Greece .
Two interesting facts to note, China supports the Palestinians and is forever warning Israel about its policy of "occupation" of "Palestinian territory" - what hypocrisy! Also, the UN Human Rights Council has so far this year passed 16 resolutions against Israel, but of course none against China for its human rights abuses in Tibet, and none against Sudan for its human rights violations in Darfur. This exposes the sheer anti-Israel bias of the UN.
It is true that little can be done against the giant and rapidly growing country of China over its occupation of Tibet. In order to seal the connection with China they have settled hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese in Tibet (but they are against Israel's settlement policy!). While the Dalai Lama receives a lot of sympathy, and good liberals should in principle support Tibetan indpendence, it is likely that they will continue to vent most of their energy against Israel. Why the Palestinians deserve so much more support than the Tibetans or the Darfurians is a mystery, but it must result from the fact that the enemy of the Palestinians are Jews.
Altogether there are ca. 5 million Tibetans living within China and several hundred thousands outside, principally in Dharmsala in India. The Dalai Lama visited Israel last year and commented that he needed to take lessons from the Jews as to how they managed to retain their religious culture for thousands of years while in exile. The Dalai Lama does not ask for full independence from China, he knows that is effectively impossible, but he asks for sufficeint autonomy to allow the Tibetans to be self-governing within the Chinese "empire." The Tibetans feel that now is the time to press for their cause while the attention of the world is focussed on China for the Olympic Games.