In the end, the hearing did more to harm Congress and the FBI than it did to expose wrongdoing. In that way, it is much like the rest of the House GOP Russia investigation. Oversight panels have devolved into partisan conspiracy machines racked by political bickering. The result is needless harm to the FBI just when the agency should be focused on preventing more foreign attacks on the nation’s democracy.

Despite its efforts to the contrary, Congress succeeded in humanizing someone who has long been a political punching bag of House Republicans and the President of the United States. Strzok’s demeanor — speaking passionately only when required to defend himself — stood in stark contrast to the grandstanding of committee members. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, reached into his quiver of snarky remarks, slinging arrows that incredibly bounced off Strzok’s shield of calm self-control.

The cockiness of Strzok at Thursday’s hearing is a reflection of the immunity that ruling-class mandarins enjoy in liberal Washington. He was testifying from the safety of the deep state and thus knew that he could lie his head off without consequence. How else to explain his unrepentant opening statement, with its blatant anti-Trump special pleading? The statement sounded like it had been written by Rachel Maddow, resting on the lamest and hackiest of MSNBC-style talking points, that “today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear American apart.”

Mr. Putin knows that the stronger NATO is as a military force, the riskier it is for him to engage in foreign adventurism. The Russian’s long-term goal is to erode the West’s political will to add to its capabilities as the memories of Crimea fade. Mr. Putin will do whatever he can in Helsinki to underscore Mr. Trump’s frustration with Europe that was on display this week at the NATO summit, planting the seeds of future discord.

While NATO leaders probably wouldn’t say this publicly, the alliance still exists mainly as a way to deter Russian aggression on the European continent. The alliance’s Article 5 provision, which states an attack on one is an attack on all, helps to keep Moscow from invading any of NATO’s 29 members, especially those in Eastern Europe. Indeed, if Putin ordered an invasion of, say, Estonia, then the US would be treaty-bound to come to Tallinn’s aid. Putin, surely, doesn’t want to start a war with America.

If the unpredictability Trump showed during the two-day NATO summit in Brussels re-emerges at the Putin summit, experts said, the United States could end up making dangerous concessions. “We still have no agenda for the Trump-Putin meeting. It’s unclear what the U.S. thinks it can get from Russia, or what it even hopes it can get,” said Alina Polyakova, a Russia analyst at the Brookings Institution. “For Putin, that ambiguity is an asset. For Trump, it’s a liability.” Nowhere is that ambiguity more pronounced than on the question of Crimea, the Ukrainian territory Russia annexed in 2014.

According to statements made this week by members of Mapai and Mapam’s descendant parties, the Basic Law: Nation-State proposal is racist. If so, comrades, your (as well as our) founding fathers were tainted by racism of the basest kind. But the majority of the people do not think so. In fact, your raging objection to the nation-state bill, and the fact that you portray the founding fathers as racists, push the public further away from you. The public that has stuck to your path until now is, from survey to survey, abandoning you, the “sons and daughters” who have lost their way.

Avraham Diskin, a professor emeritus of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the law was designed specifically to address Israel’s enemies, including the Palestinians, who do not “recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist.” “There are some controversial clauses, but it is really a very simple and declarative law that people with political interests like to say is racist because they do not believe the Jewish state has the right to exist,” he said.

“I am concerned,” Rivlin wrote Netanyahu, “that the broad manner in which this article was formulated, without balances, is liable to harm the Jewish people, the Jews throughout the world and the State of Israel, and can even be used as a weapon by our enemies.” Rivlin went on, “I would also like to turn our attention inward, to Israeli society: In the name of the Zionist vision, are we willing to lend a hand to the discrimination and exclusion of a man or a woman on the basis of his or her origin?”

Claude Lanzmann’s special genius was a spectacular brusqueness, which allowed him to reveal, as if with no effort at all, the patterns of thought that protect enormities under a cloak of niceties. Sometimes he was faintly droll and mordant in how he went about doing this. Everyone who has seen the 9 1/2 hours of Shoah will remember the scene in which an old SS Unterscharführer at Treblinka named Franz Suchomel, who does not know that he is on camera, agrees to recount his history at the camp and says, “But don’t use my name.” Lanzmann replies, “No, I promised. All right, you’ve arrived at Treblinka. …” The Unterscharführer begins to speak—and, in subtitles on the screen, his name and identity appear.

Survival is the other great subject of “Shoah”; Lanzmann’s interviews include former members of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and members of the Sonderkommando, Jewish captives in Auschwitz who were forced, on pain of death, to prepare other Jewish captives for murder—cutting their hair, leading them into the gas chamber, and then removing their corpses. It’s an act of profound and shattering moral insight that Lanzmann places these survivors of Nazi terror side by side. Survival was, for Lanzmann, an act of resistance, and members the Sonderkommando are present in the film as the closest witnesses, the ultimate resisters, of death itself.

Lanzmann’s way of storytelling was unconventional and brash, but the result is a film that is not only a work of art, but one of the most important historical records of the Holocaust. He brings us as close to the story of the Holocaust as we can possibly be without crossing the boundary between knowing and not knowing. We cannot presume to know, he subtly reminds us, but neither are we free to forget. The story of the Holocaust is ultimately a story about absence. Lanzmann made that absence visible and rendered it almost tangible, if always just beyond our reach.

It was inspiring to see this effort in part, I suspect, because of the international make-up of the rescue team, with British, American, Australian and Japanese divers (among others) joining Thai divers, and with other countries adding their expertise. This joint effort was symbolic, and it suggests a world where, at least for a time, it’s possible to work together in a constructive way toward a common goal.

Such stories do not often end well, which is why we should savor this news. Their rescue was the result of courage, persistence, science and probably some luck. It is the type of story that reaffirms our belief that the human race, despite its flaws, still produces heroes who can inspire all of us. The SEALS, the doctors and nurses caring for the boys now and everyone involved in the planning and execution of the rescue are those heroes.

There was no villain in Thailand. It’s this thread that ties our favorite rescue stories together… This time around, the watching ticked some folks off. Why, demanded a cohort of commentators, aren’t we spending these resources on further coverage of the children ripped from their families at the border? The easiest answer is that, amid a deluge of grimness, we’re starved for good news stories. But there’s something more to it: The reason rescue stories such as these are so purely good in the first place is they’re not sagas of man vs. man or man vs. society. They’re stories of man vs. nature. And that means no one is to blame.

VAR is terrible, and it is making the World Cup worse for its presence. It is slow, clunky and unpredictable, which are all the criticisms that were highlighted before it became part of soccer’s biggest tournament for the first time. Yet all of those factors could be overlooked if it wasn’t for the real whammy. VAR is wrong. A lot. Like, half the time. USA TODAY Sports has counted 12 incidents of borderline decisions where VAR usage was relevant. Six of those cases were widely considered to be correct, with six being highly disputed and incorrect in the eyes of most observers.

Soccer, as a sport, has no interest in being morally upright, or even fair. A game in which so many events occur—22 players chasing a ball over a huge field for about 90 minutes—and only one event (the ball in the net) truly counts seems, in fact, sadistically and delightfully bent on being unfair. The setup incentivizes players to do everything they can to manipulate all the minor events that might lead to scoring… It might be asking too much of the VAR system that it sort out soccer’s deeper, tacit commitment to moral ambiguity.

Like goal line technology, VAR will take time to perfect and gain the support of its critics. It may never win over those who believe the use of technology is a burden on the traditional game. That being said, VAR is a valuable and exciting asset to the modern game, which is a step in the right direction for football.