On the Scene

Jerusalem

I WOULD be happier about the results of Israel’s elections, in which I voted for Benjamin Netanyahu, if all my friends, who voted for Shimon Peres, were not in mourning. True, some of them are still talking to me; but Peres’s defeat is as tactfully avoided in these conversations as if it were a public lynching that I had taken part in. For smiles these days I have to turn to the workingmen and shopkeepers of the town I live in; with them there is much crowing and elation.