There is a well-distributed folly that consists of genuinely suffering because eleven millionaires who would not cross the street to greet their own fans lost a soccer match. On Sunday, when Norway dispatched Brazil in the round of sixteen, I suffered that folly in the middle of a workday, the yellow jersey worn under my work clothes. Nelson Rodrigues, the playwright who treated a defeat on the pitch with the gravity he reserved for adultery and death, wrote that the Brazilian’s homeland wears cleats. Soccer is the oldest folly of my life, and still the cheapest.

I admit I am writing under the influence of defeat. The sting loosened my tongue, and I am taking advantage of the candor while it lasts to confess the folly that costs me the most. I love a country that insists on miracles. Benjamin Netanyahu’s voters have called him a magician for three decades, and I am starting to think they are right, because few performers have made so much disappear. A thousand days after October seventh, the worst security disaster in our history, the state commission of inquiry remains missing, replaced by an investigation in which the man under investigation selects the investigators. Gone is accountability, which used to follow the office like a shadow. Gone is shame, that old stage assistant.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)