Now that the storm surrounding Netanyahu's speech in Congress has subsided, let's examine the undercurrents that caused it.

Some of these undercurrents were personal and political, but this is not sufficient to explain why the president of a world superpower was so troubled by the speech of a prime minister of a country barely the size of New Jersey. Why did Obama take pains to organize a personal interview the night before and another one immediately after? How does one short speech cause such a journalistic and political fuss?    

The answer lies in the speech itself, a full reading of which makes it clear that it presents the antithesis of the political agenda Obama has been pushing throughout his presidency. Not surprisingly, Netanyahu's speech served as a fundamental ideological backing for the Republicans; it was not merely a political battering ram.

This time Netanyahu drew a different red line, a moral red line demarcating the values of the West. Tolerance and acceptance of our differences are fundamental values in America, which have shaped its cultural ethos since its founding and are encapsulated in the motto E pluribus unum – out of many comes one – on the ceiling of the House of Representatives. The movie shown to visitors of the US Congress presents this ethos as well: diversity in race, color, origins and opinions is the mark of distinction that constitutes the American nation. This is indeed America's charm, land of the free immigrants and home of the brave pluralists. But it is also America's weak spot.

The challenge of such an immigrant society is to set the values and guiding principles that will define what unites all its diverse citizens into one nation. During the Eisenhower administration, in reaction to the spread of Communism, Congress changed the motto of E pluribus unum to In God we trust, with the aim of strengthening American identity. Glorifying tolerance in and of itself, without a common moral foundation, can lead to an internal breakdown of society, foster tensions between the different groups, and even result in civil war and the dissolution of its unifying alliance.

Obama's radical liberal ideology has stretched the definition of the "American nation" to the postmodern edge and has fuelled the mounting tensions between Republicans and Democrats. It has also served as the platform for the Obama administration's foreign policy, as evidenced by Obama's speech in Cairo; the compromise with Syria; the restrained stance as regards ISIS; and the negotiations with Iran – who carried out experiments in sinking a US aircraft carrier the previous week, as Netanyahu pointed out – over its development of nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu's speech didn't reveal anything new as regards Tehran's intentions or the number of centrifuges in its possession. The power of this speech lies in its moral message, and in the fact that an Israeli prime minister put it on the international agenda: relativism has its limits, Netanyahu made it clear; there is good and there is evil. There are some views that are not legitimate and should not be tolerated or negotiated with, such as the Shiite regime in Iran, against which we must take action with full force.

The minimum requirement for accepting others is that they, in turn, accept the rules of liberalism and tolerance; whosoever actively objects to these is not part of the American unum and, in the international context, is not part of the family of nations.

There is nothing more contrary to Obama's stance than this. All the accolades Netanyahu had to accord him at the beginning of his speech did not mask the fact that he was presenting the moral antithesis to Obama's diplomatic approach – to the resounding applause of the audience.

The other reason the speech caused such a stir is because Netanyahu was not speaking solely on his own behalf but on behalf of a small country that represents a great moral civilization, the one whose ethos gave rise to all of Western culture and served as the inspiration for the Founding Fathers of the United States. Netanyahu made it clear that Israel today is not just a relic of bygone prophecies. It has the means to defend itself and its values, in the event that the US continues to sing of making love and not war as it did in the Sixties.

Indeed, Netanyahu's speech was irritating to multiculturalist intellectuals and the politicians educated in their school of thought. And precisely because it was irritating it is an important speech for the state of Israel, whose moral message reverberates on the international stage, demanding a more just world that does not flinch from using its power to exercise its rights.