For Israelis, this is the time of the return of the lie. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas tells the UN General Assembly that Israel bears sole blame for the origins of the conflict, that Israel is the sole obstacle to resolving it, and that, in effect, the Jews have no connection to the land of Israel. And he receives a standing ovation.

This is also a time of inversion of expectations: Barack Obama, Israelis’ least favorite president, emerges as the defender of truth, while Bill Clinton, whom Israelis adored, joins the distorters. Here is what the week, and some of its main players, looked like from Jerusalem:

Barack Obama. Thanks to Obama, Israelis felt, at least for a moment, a little less alone. For Israelis, the most crucial part of his UN speech was this: “The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition.”

Israel, Obama was saying, deserves recognition not because of the Holocaust—an implicit point in his Cairo speech—but because Israel is the Jews’ historic homeland. In Cairo, Obama missed an opportunity to tell the Muslim world that the Jews are not a foreign transplant but an indigenous people returning home. And that omission was the beginning of Israeli disillusionment toward Obama. Now, though, the president was speaking clearly about Jewish history.

But as it turned out, only Israelis seemed to be listening. The media response was largely contemptuous: Obama wasn’t motivated by moral clarity but by political expedience, addressing not the Muslim world but American Jewish voters. Three years of estrangement had their effect: When Obama finally spoke the truth, few seemed to believe he meant it.