I have real difficulty with the contempt shown as well. As for Netanyahu, as an individual, I am repulsed. I suspect a fair number of people feel this way. I think this course needs to change, and quite rapidly. For instance, Israel has hammered Canada's Conservatives into a truly knee-jerk set of pro-Israel policies, ones that out-run Canadian opinion by a long yard. Ultimately, that's not so useful. 

Nice work AA.  There are indeed many competing voices in Israel on the issue of halting Iranian efforts to build a nuclear weapon.  Bibi does not speak for every Israeli; he's a politician, an opportunist, and one who is absolutely dependent on some of the most extreme elements of the Israeli electorate.  And, in that respect, as you point out above, it seems more likely to some pretty serious analysts that Bibi's speech was aimed at the precincts in Ariel and nowhere within range of Peoria or even Broward County, and was also designed to extend an olive branch, and not antagonize or damage, the Obama Administration.

Here's an update from Jeffrey Goldberg this morning:

The speech also showed that Netanyahu might not know how to draw -- it appears he may have placed his red line in the wrong place on his now-famous Wile E. Coyote ACME bomb cartoon.  It also showed him to be a condescending person (I've heard from several people in the hall -- including a couple of people, rare for the UN, who don't hate Israel, who felt that the bomb drawing was Netanyahu's way of saying, "Look at this, you idiots.") Mainly, what the speech might be about is Netanyahu's upcoming reelection campaign. This from Yossi Verter:
 

Thursday's speech also had political ramifications that presumably were not lost on the speaker: If, at the start of the Knesset's winter session in around two weeks, Netanyahu calls for early elections (probably in February ) it's clear that the election campaign will be centered on the Iranian threat. In an election campaign that has a security-diplomatic, even existential character, less experienced politicians or political wannabes like Labor's Shelly Yacimovich and Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid, who are pushing a socio-economic agenda, will find themselves in terra incognita, with little to sell the public.

The Wile E. Coyote cartoon makes sense in this context: Netanyahu was playing almost entirely to a domestic audience. His soothing words about the U.S. were obviously meant to calm down the White House, which has reached the point where it is getting infuriated -- inappropriately, I think -- over idiotic tweets from low-level Israeli government officials. But the audience was Israel. Israelis certainly don't mind a prime minister who condescends to the U.N., an organization that regularly scapegoats their country.

Goldberg concludes:

What [Bibi] did was take a deadly serious issue and turn it into a cartoon. People may remember his speech, but not neccessarily for the right reasons.

Oh, and by the way: If I were in charge of the Iranian nuclear program, I would spend the next six months accelerating the movement of all of my centrifuges to the underground Fordow nuclear facility.