WASHINGTON | There was no mention of “terrorists” or “terrorism,” just “violent extremists.”

There was the suggestion that Israeli settlements are illegitimate and the assertion that the Palestinians “have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.” There were frequent references to the “Holy Koran” and echoes of Muslim phrases.

President Obama, who aides say spent many hours “holed up” in the last week revising his Cairo speech, clearly believes in the power of his oratory to win people to his point of view. In many ways, he used his address to promote American values, but his efforts to use new language to recast old grievances have already prompted debate and consternation in some quarters.

At the same time, he avoided specific complaints about the lack of freedoms in the Muslim world. Instead, he spoke of the need to obtain concrete political goals, such as the fair administration of justice. He made no mention of his host, President Hosni Mubarak, a snub surely noticed by Egypt’s autocratic ruler of nearly three decades.

In discussing the Arab-Israeli conflict, Obama was both resolute in expressing support for Israel and remarkably sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians. In an Arab capital, he spoke of America’s “unbreakable” bond with Israel and condemned anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, an apparent repudiation of the anti-Israeli rhetoric that periodically emanates from Iran. Yet he also seemed to draw an equivalence between Jewish and Palestinian suffering, noting that “the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation.”

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