Speech Therapy.

• Author: Glastris, Paul
• Position: Editor's Note - Barack Obama's relation with the Middle East - Editorial

When Barack Obama left to visit Israelin March, expectations could hardly have been lower. He had a relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was widely described as "frosty." The two had feuded over everything from Obama's insistence, early in his first term, that Israel freeze settlement building to Netanyahu's repeated threat to bomb Iran unilaterally. The rapport between them was so strained that Netanyahu had all-but openly rooted for Mitt Romney to win in November.

The Israeli public, too, viewed Obama with suspicion. He had not visited Israel in his first term, and in his famous 2009 Cairo speech, he was said to have argued that the Holocaust justified Israel's creation, a grave insult to a country that bases its right to exist on the Jewish people's historic and uninterrupted presence in the Holy Land. That Obama had not in fact said this in Cairo, that other presidents had waited until their second term to visit Israel, and that under Obama military aid to Israel was at a record high did not seem to matter. Polls showed that a sizable portion of Israelis viewed Obama as hostile to their interests and partial to the Palestinians.

The president's aim during this visit was to turn this unpromising state of affairs around, a fact that became apparent as soon as, he exited Air Force One. "I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic homeland of the Jewish people," Obama said upon arriving at Ben Gurion Airport--magic words meant to rebut the impression left by his Cairo speech. He would elaborate on that formulation over the next three days, to the delight of Israeli media commentators, underscoring the point with a visit to the tomb of Theodor Herzl.

Before the trip, former U.S. diplomat and Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, echoing a widely held view, predicted in the Washington Post that "[t]here isn't likely to be a dramatic transformation in Obama and Netanyahu's relationship, and certainly not on this visit." But in their joint appearances in Israel, the president and Netanyahu--whose power had been weakened in recent Israeli elections even as Obama's was strengthened in November--were all smiles and pats on the back, conspicuously agreeing with each other's positions on Iran and Syria, trading jokes about their respective children's good looks, and displaying such bonhomie that NBC's Mark Murray called it a "bromance."

Then came the highlight of the trip, Obama's address to...