The Los Angeles Times has also picked up on the story. The contrast between Robinson and her critics is stark:

Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and a member of the Jewish caucus to the conference, said Thursday that Robinson “allowed the event to be hijacked by extremists who had no interest in peace.”

The episode, Cooper said, “degraded” the global human rights effort, setting the stage for the second racism conference, held this spring, in which a keynote speaker was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fierce enemy of Israel who has questioned whether the Holocaust occurred.

Robinson “simply did not have the guts . . . to step into the fray and say it can’t be this way,” Cooper said. “She’s a nice woman and a good person, but the fact that you mean well isn’t a prerequisite to get our nation’s highest honor.”

Robinson, Ireland’s president from 1990 to 1997, told Irish reporters this week that the accusations had no merit and blamed the controversy on “a lot of bullying by certain elements of the Jewish community.”

Just bullies for bringing up that Durban material. Old hat. Get on with it. Why are they making such a fuss? Her contempt oozes. But perhaps, as I suggested, Obama’s ability to deflect and minimize American Jewish opposition to his policy toward Israel is fading. A new poll suggests most American Jews have had it with Obama’s settlement policy. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann explain that while Jews overwhelmingly approve of Obama’s job performance, it is a different story on Israel according to a telephone survey by the Traditional Values Coalition and conducted by Global Marketing Research Services on July 22-24 of 500 American Jews who self-identified as Democrats:

Asked to choose between the Obama view that “if Israel could settle its dispute with the Palestinian refugees and give them a nation of their own, that the Arabs would live in peace with Israel” and the Israeli government view that “the Arabs will never live in peace with Israel and that giving them a nation of their own will just make them stronger,” Jewish Democrats sided with the Israeli view by 52 percent to 20 percent.On the contentious issue of construction in existing West Bank settlements, Democratic Jews also sided with Israel more than with Obama. The survey asked for agreement with Obama when he “says that it is very important that Israel not expand its settlements on the West Bank so as not to alienate the Palestinians,” or with Israel that “it should be allowed to build new homes in existing settlements but not to start new ones” — and got 52-37 backing for the Israeli view.

[. . .]

By 58-16, Jewish Democrats agree that “Obama is doing a good job of promoting peace in the Middle East.” But they share Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s skepticism about trading land for peace, the cornerstone of the “road map” to a settlement laid out in the 1990s. . . Nearly half of Jewish Democrats still reject the idea that Obama is biased against Israel: In all, 49 percent said he wasn’t and 16 percent said he was — but a significantly large number, 35 percent, said they were undecided.

Only 27 percent feel that “President Obama is right that Israel should agree to let the Palestinians form their own country and return the West Bank to them. This would defuse the hatred in the Middle East, reduce terrorism and help America, the Palestinians, and Israel live in peace.”

This survey was taken weeks before the Robinson award and before more rounds of haranguing Michael Oren on settlements. I suspect the number of Jews who are “undecided” about Obama’s anti-Israel bias may be going up. There is just so much the American Jewish community can be expected to countenance; the Robinson mess is just the latest affront — and may be, if the president simply hunkers down, a defining moment.