In late 2011, a tweet was posted from the Occupy Wall Street Twitter account. Written in support of the flotilla that the Israeli military had just intercepted, it read: “We support and would like to express #solidarity to #FreedomWaves #Palestine #ows.” The message was quickly deleted.

A mealy-mouthed explanation circulated: the Tweet was “unauthorized” and had not been subject to Occupy’s consensus-based decision-making structure. And it was never discussed because consensus on Israel/Palestine would have been impossible to achieve — a dispiriting fact. It’s difficult to imagine other contexts where support for activists trying to break a brutal blockade would have been so hard to muster.

But that fact remains. Whether because of lingering Zionism or lack of analytical clarity, the Left has had trouble accepting the reality of Israeli colonialism. Indeed, the refusal to consider Israel’s nature seeps into movements that actually oppose Israeli crimes. Progressive disapproval too often fixates on Israel’s excesses: riotous settlers, wars on Gaza, spotty record with African immigrants, and right-wing fundamentalists. More provincially, some see such missteps as endangering US national and geostrategic interests.