Let me guess. She didn’t inhale?

Hat tip: Soccer Dad

Why am I mentioning it again now? Funny you should ask.

The United States has revoked the visas of three Palestinian Fulbright scholars whose cases were taken up personally by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after Israel refused to let them leave Gaza for interviews, U.S. officials said Monday.

Gallegos declined to comment on the nature of the new information about the four Palestinians, one of whom had actually arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington before he was told his visa had been revoked and was forced to return to Jordan.

But another official familiar with the situation said the information related to security issues that were behind the refusal by Israeli authorities to allow them to leave Gaza to be interviewed for visas at the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem in May.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to privacy concerns about visa records.

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Rice had been infuriated when State Department officials canceled the Fulbright scholarships of seven Palestinian students whom Israel had refused to let leave Gaza for their visa interviews.

After she took their cases to senior Israeli officials, Israel allowed four of the seven to travel to Jerusalem for interviews in June. Although Israel opposed the move, U.S. diplomats then made a rare trip to the Gaza border in July to interview the remaining three.

One official said Rice, who had been outspoken about the negative signal the original cancellations sent to Palestinians and the broader Arab world, had ordered a top-to-bottom review of the entire Fulbright scholarship vetting process in the wake of the cancellations.

Perhaps Rice should be more concerned about the negative signal her intervention and now subsequent “egg-on-face” moment will send to the world regarding her competence.

“Javier, you ate onions again, didn’t you?”

As Tim McGirk of Time writes:

I feel sorry for Condoleezza Rice. That’s a sad thing to have to say about the secretary of state for a superpower, but let’s face the facts: she’s made 22 trips to Israel during the Bush Administration’s eight years, and she has little to show for it. Israeli TV announcers coined her name as a verb, meaning to go endlessly around in circles, accomplishing nothing.

That verb would be lecondel, derived from her first name.

Which got me thinking about other possible verbs. I’ll start it off:

leobam – to sound good while saying nothing

Now over to you. Hint: the infinitive verb always starts with “le.”

And what an editorial it is.

President Bush often speaks to the annual policy conference in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but this year, he skipped it. Our sources tell us that the reason he passed up the chance to appear before a friendly audience in his final year as president was that he felt that he couldn’t top the speech he’d just given to the Knesset marking Israel’s 60th birthday. And no wonder. Mr. Bush called the founding of the Jewish state 60 years ago “the redemption of an ancient promise given to Abraham and Moses and David — a homeland for the chosen people, Eretz Yisrael.”

And he told a story: “Sixty years ago, on the eve of Israel’s independence, the last British soldiers departing Jerusalem stopped at a building in the Jewish quarter of the Old City. An officer knocked on the door and met a senior rabbi. The officer presented him with a short iron bar — the key to the Zion Gate — and said it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of Jerusalem had belonged to a Jew. His hands trembling, the rabbi offered a prayer of thanksgiving to God, ‘Who had granted us life and permitted us to reach this day.’ Then he turned to the officer, and uttered the words Jews had awaited for so long: ‘I accept this key in the name of my people.’”

With such beautiful, moving, meaningful words spoken by Mr. Bush on May 15, it was a disappointment to read yesterday of Secretary of State Rice’s latest remarks in respect of Jerusalem. “Rice Criticizes Israel on West Bank Settlements,” is the way the headline was written on the Associated Press, which characterized Ms. Rice’s language as “exceptionally harsh.” The Wall Street Journal headline was “Rice Says Jewish Housing Plan Undermines Mideast Peace Talks.” What a contrast with Mr. Bush’s first principles.

The settlements at issue, after all, aren’t in the West Bank, but in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital. Even if they were in the West Bank, it can’t have escaped Mr. Bush’s notice that the land promised to Abraham and Moses and David was the West Bank. What is the point of celebrating God’s promise of the land of Israel to the Jewish people, or of celebrating the possession by a rabbi of the key to Jerusalem, if every time the Jewish state wants to create new housing units in its own capital the American secretary of state turns it into an international cause of complaint?

The Jerusalem Post this morning quotes one Israel cabinet minister, Eli Yishai, as telling Israel Radio, “The government is permitted to decide to build according to need, and exactly as the French government builds in Paris and the U.S. government builds in Washington … If we place restrictions on construction around Jerusalem, we will eventually also need a special approval to build in Tel Aviv.”

Mr. Yishai, a former member of the Jerusalem city council, has it exactly right. The Palestinian Arabs have no more standing to tell Israel not to build in Jerusalem than Al Qaeda has standing to tell America not to build in Washington. Lest Ms. Rice or Mr. Bush feel tempted to waver on this point, they could consult American law, the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, setting forth “the policy of the United States” that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city” and that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel.” Or they could consult Senator Obama’s speech to Aipac, in which he said, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” a formulation that Senator McCain has also declared.

There are lots of obstacles to peace in the Middle East. Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are funding and harboring anti-Israel terrorists. A Hamas state dedicated to Israel’s destruction holds sway at Gaza, whence it daily launches rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. In that context, for Ms. Rice to elevate Israeli housing construction in its own capital to the level of a problem in the peace talks indicates a lack of seriousness. If Mr. Bush isn’t careful, her actions will erode the legacy of the speech he delivered at the Knesset, ripping the key to Jerusalem out of the hands of the rabbi and putting it in the hands of the State Department or what remains of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization.

Tough crowd.