Jerusalem. Next thing I expect they’ll have one of those maps of “Palestine,” that doesn’t include Israel, on the State Department web site. And then there’s this:

Robinson’s record is well known to most Jews with even a passing familiarity with the Jewish media. It cannot be a surprise that honoring Robinson in this way would be anathema to the Jewish community. In addition, I know from having worked in the White House that these selections go through extremely careful vetting of public and non-public databases to make sure that they would not embarrass the president in any way. The staff secretary’s office, which clears all paperwork that goes to the president, would also make sure that all of the relevant offices sign off on important selections before they happen. The two most important sign offs on something like the Medal of Freedom would be the chief of staff’s office, now headed by Rahm Emanuel, and the senior advisor’s office, now run by David Axelrod. For the Obama White House to have made this selection could mean one of only two possibilities: that they did not vet and clear the candidates, which suggests a level of incompetence beyond even missing tax evasions by cabinet nominees. Uncaught tax evasion does not come up on Google; Robinson’s record does. The other, more likely, possibility is that they knew and did not care.

It’s almost like they’re on the other side. And American Jews continue to play the sucker.

[Update a few minuts later]

But wait! There’s more:

Israel has a less favorable view of the United States now than it did in 2007 — by 6 points. Aren’t you glad we’ve appeased places like Syria and Venezuela and Cuba and Burma, though?

But a few other interesting data points come from the Pew survey as well: The Palestinian territories — run by Hamas and Fatah — do have a better opinion of the United States. So our chief ally in the Middle East is more nervous, and Yasser Arafat’s legatees are more happy.

But now get this from the survey: There is little evidence that support for suicide bombing in the Muslim world has decreased.

You don’t say.

Obama continues to throw them a life line:

…even as the Iranian people are casting doubt on the legitimacy of the regime (and are being brutalized for doing so) and even as the regime continues trying to kill Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, Obama is giving the mullahs the three things they most need: confidence in their security, international legitimacy, and time.

As I’ve been saying for a month, there is nothing complicated about this: Obama wants the mullahs to win. That seems impossible to believe for many well-intentioned people, but once you accept it — and everything it implies — life starts to make much sense. It isn’t any better, mind you, but at least it makes sense.

Sadly, yes. It’s hard to show how persuasive you are in negotiating with your fellow dictators if they get inconveniently thrown out of office.

Hugo Chavez seems to have given up on him. He probably figured that he had enough problems of his own. And of course, that means that their good bud Barack Obama has probably given up on him as well, since he never had a good case to make to support him in the first place, and he also has enough problems of his own. Good for the Honduran people, if not for him.

And note how the issue has fallen out of the news…

A report from Roger Simon, on what’s happening in Honduras. And US reportage.

A gloomy dispatch from Michael Yon, in Afghanistan.

Some questions:

Now that the president has decided it’s okay to meddle in Honduras (where they are fighting to keep preserve their democracy against the Chávez-style thug who Obama wants to re-install) but not Iran (where thousands of Iranians who seek democracy are being killed, maimed and jailed by a regime which has been at war with the United States for 30 years), the president’s tack is to say that Honduras’s action in removing Zelaya is “not legal.”

What on earth makes Obama think he knows better about what is legal under the law of Honduras than the Supreme Court of Honduras and the law-writing legislature of Honduras? The Honduran military acted after Zelaya defied an order by that nation’s highest court which pronounced his coup attempt illegal; he has been replaced under a Honduran legal process by that nation’s Congress, which essentially impeached him and democratically voted in a successor. That sounds pretty legal to me. I am the first to admit I am not an expert in Honduran law, but I’d bet the Honduran Supreme Court has a better grasp on it than President Obama. On the issue of what is legal in Honduras, as between Hugo Chávez and the Honduran Supreme Court, our president has decided to go with Chávez.

Secondly, as IBD notes, the Obama administration is now “threatening to halt its $200 million in U.S. aid, immigration accords and a free-trade treaty if it doesn’t put the criminal Zelaya back into office.” Can someone explain to me how it is that Obama is willingly giving $900M to Hamastan (i.e., the jihadist-controlled Gaza strip) but would pull back a comparative pittance of aid in order to penalize a poor country in our own hemisphere for trying to preserve its democracy against a would-be left-wing dictator?

Also, as Charles Krauthammer said last night on Special Report:

…our decision ought to be: Yes, a coup isn’t a nice thing, but it’s preferable to having Zelaya dismantle the democracy. And we should insist on the elections of a president as scheduled in November, so it is a temporary situation.

Look, a rule of thumb here is whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions.

Hey, left-wing dictators have to stick together.

[Update early evening]

Banana Democrats:

Zelaya’s operatives did their dirt all the way through. First they got signatures to launch the “citizen’s power” survey through threats — warning those who didn’t sign that they’d be denied medical care and worse. Zelaya then had the ballots flown to Tegucigalpa on Venezuelan planes. After his move was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, he tried to do it anyway.

As a result of his brazen disregard for the law, Zelaya found himself escorted from office by the military Sunday morning, and into exile. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro rushed to blame the U.S., calling it a “yanqui coup.”

President Obama on Monday called the action “not legal,” and claimed that Zelaya is still the legitimate president.

There was a coup all right, but it wasn’t committed by the U.S. or the Honduran court. It was committed by Zelaya himself. He brazenly defied the law, and Hondurans overwhelmingly supported his removal (a pro-Zelaya rally Monday drew a mere 200 acolytes).

Yet the U.S. administration stood with Chavez and Castro, calling Zelaya’s lawful removal “a coup.” Obama called the action a “terrible precedent,” and said Zelaya remains president.

In doing this, the U.S. condemned democrats who stood up to save their democracy, a move that should have been hailed as a historic turning of the tide against the false democracies of the region.

They only like democracy when it gives them the right (in this case “left”) result.