By tempering his tone and lavishing praise on America, Binyamin Netanyahu enjoyed his love-in with US politicians

It didn't take long during Binyamin Netanyahu's speech to the joint session of Congress for the jokes to start: "How many House votes would you get for an amendment to allow Israelis to run for prez? 300? 350?"

Such was the warmth of the reception – called "friendly and enthusiastic" by the Los Angeles Times – that the Israeli prime minister received that it was easy to imagine him running for office. A lot of Republicans might prefer Netanyahu to the cast of nobodies and has-beens competing for their party's presidential nomination.

Netanyahu gave a canny speech, one that produced bipartisan support in its applause lines, as if seeking to erase any frosty impression left from his appearance alongside Barack Obama in the Oval Office last week.



Netanyahu warmed up with his opening remarks by shaking hands with Joe Biden behind him on the podium, saying: "Mr Vice President, do you remember the time that we were the new kids in town?"

Getting into his stride, Netanyahu quickly got a standing ovation and loud cheers when he went on to say:

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!

In fact, ABC News counted Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations during his address to Congress – in contrast to the 25 that Obama received during his State of the Union address earlier in the year.

Then again, most Israeli leaders can count on a warm reception on the American political stage, especially when they praise its politicians and bash its enemies, such as Iran. For the US representatives and senators present, their cheers were a risk- and cost-free way of supporting Israel, which remains a pivotal ally as well as a powerful domestic constituency.

Netanyahu said little more to Congress than he had already said in public, including alongside Obama on Thursday or in his address to the lobby group Aipac on Monday. He repeated Israel's rejection of the 1967 boundaries but prefaced it more carefully to stress agreement with the Obama administration – if anything a tempering of his tone from last week:

We'll be generous about the size of the future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4th, 1967. Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967.

Netanyahu even went so far as to say explicitly that "some settlements will end up beyond Israel's borders". Throughout, Netanyahu mentioned "peace" more than 50 times, generating applause and standing ovations with impassioned declarations:

The peace with Egypt and Jordan has long served as an anchor of stability and peace in the heart of the Middle East. And this peace should be bolstered by economic and political support to all those who remain committed to peace. The peace agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan are vital, but they're not enough. We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians.

Some commentators suspected an undertone of a snub in Netanyahu's delivery – and Republicans would have been quick to read any real disagreement into his speech. But Netanyahu is not foolish enough to let himself be used as a political football, and instead offered bipartisan praise:

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.

Obama, though, was far away on the other side of the Atlantic, playing table tennis with David Cameron at a school in London.

One of the few congressional hold-outs was Republican senator Rand Paul, who sat in lonely vigil reading newspapers in the empty Senate debating chamber – not as a snub but to make a protest on a procedural point. Paul, though, had already heard Netanyahu speak this week, at the Aipac conference.