If presidential visits to the State of Israel were graded in similar fashion to those given for tests in college, President Barack Obama’s first visit to the Jewish State as president would receive straight A’s. 

From every point of view, Obama handled each aspect of his visit to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Kingdom of Jordan with sensitivity and skill. And he capped off his stellar performance with the dramatic telephone call he arranged between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which broke the ice over the long-simmering dispute over the deaths of Turkish citizens in the Gaza flotilla four years ago.

Perhaps The New York Times editorial on Obama’s trip to Israel encapsulated the president’s trip most effectively with its headline, quoting the president as saying to the people of Israel, “I speak to you as a friend…”, and then following with the sub-headline, “President Obama’s speech in Israel was a rhetorical success. Now what?”

If anything, this description may be understated, as Obama’s trip was far more than a merely “rhetorical success.” Consider just a few major accomplishments of the trip:

• Timing is Everything: By making the first overseas trip of his second term a full state visit to Israel, President Obama underscored just how serious he is about assuring Israelis that the United States considers Israel its longest-term and most consistent ally in the ever-more-dangerous Middle East. With the civil war in Syria spilling across multiple borders including that of Israel, with Egypt still convulsed politically over the power grab by President Mohammed Morsi and with the looming threat that Iran might indeed develop nuclear weapons, the visit by the Commander-in-Chief could not have been more timely.

• Diplomacy equals Perception equals Reality: Symbolism is of major importance in diplomacy, and the components of the trip — including hours of discussion with Bibi, a face-to-face with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II, whose nation is being overwhelmed by Syrian refugees — demonstrated a pan-regional approach to stability. Yet his stops at key cultural points showed a strong and insistent support for Zionism and the Jewish people. The grave of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism was particularly important, as it reinforced U.S. recognition of Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and reaffirmed U.S. support of Israel as a specifically Jewish State — a concept which has been under siege in recent years.

• Learning from Mistakes: The New York Times noted that four years ago, Obama made Cairo University the site of his first overseas visit of his first term. His effusive outreach to Egypt and the Arab-Muslim world, and his ill-advised decision to skip visiting Israel while in the region, were interpreted in Israel to have been a diplomatic snub. By going to Israel as the first overseas trip of his second term, and by his strong and repeated affirmation of his pledge that the bonds between the U.S. and Israel are “unbreakable,” we think the president did much to eliminate the vestiges of resentment caused by that first visit to the Middle East four years ago.

• Learning from Mistakes, Part II: When the president visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial in Jerusalem, he made it clear that the establishment of the State of Israel was NOT merely a response to the horrors of the Holocaust, but the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty on the historic and biblical homeland of the Jewish People. This was a most welcome statement addressing one of the central values of the modern State of Israel.

• A Kickstart on the Peace Process? President Obama also visited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, and wisely reaffirmed support for the moderate leader of the P.A. It was the highest-level official U.S.-Palestinian contact since Abbas’s ill-timed effort to gain United Nations General Assembly recognition as a “non-member observer state,” a move that should have been coordinated with the peace process. Obama also made it emphatically clear that he was not giving up on the Israel-Palestinian peace process, reinforced by the announcement that Secretary of State John Kerry will make reviving that process a priority issue in the immediate future.

• Appealing to the Future: In his direct speech to younger Israelis, Obama deployed the kind of personal charm and connectedness that endeared so many younger voters in his first campaign back in 2008. The younger Israelis repeatedly applauded Obama’s affirmation of the right of the Palestinian people to an independent state living side-by-side in peace with a Jewish State of Israel.

While only time and effort will tell if Obama and Kerry can work effectively toward Middle East goals that provide a long-term safe and secure Israel, the president clearly deserves high marks for his historic, thoughtful and inspiring visit to the State of Israel last week.