Operation Desert Schmooze, President Barack Obama's two-day charm offensive in Jerusalem last week, achieved its central goal of convincing Israelis that the U.S. president doesn't have horns.
Obama's achievements were partly symbolic. Merely by smiling and saying comforting words about Israel's inherent legitimacy, he went a long way toward neutralizing a Republican propaganda campaign that was meant to convince Israelis (and American Jews) that he was the bastard offspring of Jimmy Carter and Hamas. Jonathan Tobin, formerly an acidic critic of Obama's approach to Israel, wrote on Commentary magazine's website that many of the president's "Jewish and Democratic defenders have been to some extent vindicated and his critics chastened, if not silenced."
The achievements were also substantive. Obama somehow convinced the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a man who does not spend his days looking for people to apologize to, that he should call the obstreperous Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to say how sorry he was for the loss of Turkish lives during the notorious flotilla conflict off the Mediterranean coast in 2010. The apology is helping clear a path for cooperation between the two countries on other matters, including the fallout from the coming disintegration of Syria.