The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin are seared into the collective memory of Jews. Popular culture likes to celebrate the way Jesse Owens reportedly humiliated Adolf Hitler; Jews tend to focus on the way the pomp and circumstance of the games, and the failure of a single country to boycott them, helped legitimize the Nazi regime even as its leaders were firing up the ovens.

China understands the symbolic power of the Olympic Games as a global showcase, and is treating the 2008 games in Beijing as its coming out party. China may not be Nazi Germany, but it is a repressive Communist state with a disturbing human rights record and an abysmal environmental and public safety record. In its rush to embrace the market economy, China has been exporting a taste of its misery overseas. An oil-thirsty China is tightly in league with Sudan, propping up a country that does bear more than a passing resemblance to the Third Reich. Khartoum has been largely able to ignore Western pressure to stop its genocide in Darfur because of the cash and diplomatic support it gets from Beijing.

The Save Darfur Coalition, which includes a sizable number of Jewish organizations, has been urging pressure on China, and has even been able to report that such efforts are paying off, with China's decision in April to push Sudan to accept a UN peacekeeping force. Yet Chinese officials continue to water down Darfur peacekeeping resolutions in the United Nations Security Council.

Calls for a boycott, like that by California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters, may be premature, but Darfur activists are attempting to ratchet up the public pressure in the meantime. An Olympic Torch Relay from Darfur to Beijing and across the United States is an attempt to galvanize public condemnation of China's cozy relationship with Sudan.

China is desperate to put its best face forward in 2008. The time is ripe to prevent a mistake of Olympic proportions.