Here is the text of President Obama’s speech in Westminster Hall. Well received more for powerful delivery and ‘feel-good factor’ than substance.

Before he left Washington the President gave an important speech on the upheavals across the Arab region and what it all meant for the Middle East. Text here.

This latter speech was widely seen by Israel and by Israel’s supporters in the USA as bearing down hard(er) on Israel, insofar as Obama called for a solution to the Israel/Palestine question "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states".

The subsequent speech to Congress in Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has received comparatively little coverage in Europe. But it was a powerful performance which won sustained applause from Republicans and Democrats alike. Full text here. This opening sets the tone:

Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism. Congratulations America, Congratulations, Mr. President. You got bin Laden. Good riddance!

My friends, you don’t need to do nation building in Israel. We’re already built.

You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it.

You don’t need to send American troops to defend Israel. We defend ourselves. You’ve been very generous in giving us tools to do the job of defending Israel on our own.

Thank you all, and thank you President Obama, for your steadfast commitment to Israel’s security. I know economic times are tough. I deeply appreciate this…

The overall result of the Netanyahu visit to Washington is vividly described by Walter Russell Mead in one of the most ruthless demolition jobs of a US President and his policy you’re likely to see in a good while. Whatever you think of the grim and complicated Middle East and Arab/Israeli/Palestinian nexus of problems, have a look at this writer warming to his task:

I had never thought there were many similarities between the pleasure-loving Charles II of England and the more upright Barack Obama until this week.  Listening to his speeches on the Middle East at the State Department, US-Israel relations at the AIPAC annual meeting and most recently his address to the British Parliament the comparison becomes irresistible.

“Here lies our sovereign king,” wrote the Earl of Rochester about King Charles:

Whose word no man relies on.
Who never said a foolish thing
Or ever did a wise one.

This seems to capture President Obama’s Middle East problems in a nutshell…

His record of grotesque, humiliating and total diplomatic failure in his dealings with Prime Minister Netanyahu has few parallels in American history.  Three times he has gone up against Netanyahu; three times he has ingloriously failed. 

This last defeat — Netanyahu’s deadly, devastating speech to Congress in which he eviscerated President Obama’s foreign policy to prolonged and repeated standing ovations by members of both parties — may have been the single most stunning and effective public rebuke to an American President a foreign leader has ever delivered.

Netanyahu beat Obama like a red-headed stepchild; he played him like a fiddle; he pounded him like a big brass drum.  The Prime Minister of Israel danced rings around his arrogant, professorial opponent.  It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters go up against the junior squad from Miss Porter’s School; like watching Harvard play Texas A&M, like watching Bambi meet Godzilla — or Bill Clinton run against Bob Dole…

Is Obama’s problem that he is too academically smart and unable to work out to deal with the emotional resonance which Israel has in the USA? W R Mead thinks so:

As the stunning and overwhelming response to Prime Minister Netanyahu in Congress showed, Israel matters in American politics like almost no other country on earth.  Well beyond the American Jewish and the Protestant fundamentalist communities, the people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul.  The idea of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism is profoundly tied to the idea of American exceptionalism.  The belief that God favors and protects Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects America.

… Substantial numbers of voters believe that politicians who don’t ‘get’ Israel also don’t ‘get’ America and don’t ‘get’ God.  Obama’s political isolation on this issue, and the haste with which liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi left the embattled President to take the heat alone, testify to the pervasive sense in American politics that Israel is an American value.  Said the Minority Leader to the Prime Minister: “I think it’s clear that both sides of the Capitol believe you advance the cause of peace.”

President Obama probably understands this intellectually; he understands many things intellectually.  But what he can’t seem to do is to incorporate that knowledge into a politically sustainable line of policy. 

The deep American sense of connection to and, yes, love of Israel limits the flexibility of any administration.  Again, the President seems to know that with his head.  But he clearly had no idea what he was up against when Bibi Netanyahu came to town…

Read the whole thing. And note the pessimistic conclusion.

Still, this has been one of the best weeks for top-end public speaking (and the art of making an impact through a speech) in living memory. Lots for us speechwriters to study for a long time to come.