Here is a report about the tactic being adopted by one Palestinian village against the buiding of the security wall:

After three years of brutal Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and brutal Israeli reprisals, the villagers of Budrus have re-discovered the power of peaceful protest.

For two months, Israeli troops, bulldozers and construction crews have been trying to build a section of Israel’s security barrier through the olive groves and farmland of this village – but have had their path blocked by residents. Every couple of days, the villagers march out to the construction site, shouting to soldiers “This is a peaceful protest!” in English and Hebrew, as well as “God is Greatest!” in Arabic.
…..
For years, Palestinians have dismissed the idea that nonviolent resistance could work in their struggle against Israeli occupation…

Only a handful of Palestinians – such as the exiled activist Mubarak Awad or human rights campaigner Bassam Eid – have urged that Palestinians abandon their violent intifada, or uprising, for peaceful resistance. Politically, they have been marginalized, overwhelmed by an increasingly embittered culture that lionizes suicide bombers.

Saturday night, so me and WotN get ourselves down to the local fleapit – no, not really – multiplex, to take in Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton and co in Something’s Gotta Give. Predictable? Check. Soppy? Check. Closure of an ideologically dubious kind? A lot of people I know would say so. Did we enjoy it? You bet. It was entertaining, funny and… aahhhh. Jacko is himself, Frances McDormand is, briefly, lovely, Keanu Reeves tries his hand at acting as a doctor, and even old Starsky puts in an appearance. As for Diane Keaton she’s the business, delivering a real tour de force. And it has this great line:

I have never lied to you. I’ve always told you a version of the truth.

See it if you like this sort of thing.

This is a nice piece by Nora Ephron about the making of When Harry Met Sally. She wrote a certain amount of what she was getting to know of director Rob Reiner into the character of Harry, and of herself into the character of Sally. Billy Crystal suggested the ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ line for the faked orgasm scene.

Last night I went to the Royal Northern College of Music to hear the Tomasz Stanko Quartet, currently touring the UK. I have one of Stanko’s albums, Leosia – very highly regarded – on which basis I was looking forward to the gig.

It exceeded all my expectations. It was one of the most fantastic evenings of jazz I’ve had in recent years, and that covers a fair number. Apart from Stanko himself whose trumpet playing was absorbing, inventive and exuberant by turns, what made the evening so outstanding was the pianist, Marcin Wasilewski. I don’t have the language of technical music description to be able to tell you why and how he was so good, but this guy is sensational. Whether or not that’s already been picked up amongst the jazz cognoscenti I also don’t know, not keeping up with jazz magazines and such; but he’s got to be headed for the very top. Brad Mehldau – yup; Esbjorn Svensson – yup; Wasilewski will be there with the very best. If Stanko himself hadn’t been so good, you’d have worried that the veteran trumpeter was being upstaged by his young piano player.

I gathered from a bloke sitting next to me that, separately from Stanko, Wasilewski and the bassist and drummer, Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Michal Miskiewicz, form the Simple Acoustic Trio. I’ll be taking steps to get hold of any albums they’ve made.

Here’s the rest of their schedule in the UK. If you have the chance, don’t miss it, not for anything.

Following close upon the Jewish haiku, I bring you these:

There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others.
The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame.
The Tao does not take sides. The Tao is not Jewish.

Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy. With the second, satisfaction. With the third, Danish.

The Buddha taught that one should practice loving-kindness to all sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?

To Find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

Do not let children play contact sports like football. These only lead to injuries and instill a violent, war-like nature. Encourage your child to play peaceful games, like “sports doctor.”

If you meet the Buddha on the path, show him the photos of the grandchildren.

(Hat tip: EG.)

Until yesterday these were two of the things I knew in connection with Richard Wagner:

Mark Twain – ‘I am told that Wagner’s music isn’t as bad as it sounds.’

Saul Bellow – ‘To Mr. Sammler’s ears, Wagner was background music for a pogrom.’

Then I learned the following. It’s one of those things you’d just as soon not know but which, once you come upon it, you’re stuck with. It’s about his very devoted Cosima:

This was a wife who collected and venerated her husband’s eyebrow clippings, and who knows what else.

This report by Ian Black (see also here) and this one by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (also here) are perhaps different in emphasis, but that is hardly surprising given the division of views about both the reasons for, and the extent of, the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe.

A number of relevant considerations compete for attention: yes, anti-Semitism is again becoming a serious problem in Europe; no, we are not talking mid-twentieth century levels; some criticism of Israel is undoubtedly anti-Semitic, whether overtly in form, or by its silences or its motivating aims; however, much criticism of Israel isn’t anti-Semitic, it is the legitimate product of indefensible Israeli policies; and so on.

A while back Chris Bertram posted on this topic at Crooked Timber and took some flak for what he said. (See the comments thread, and also here, bottom of the page.) Chris was opposing the view that Europe is now ‘a seething cauldron of ancient Jew-hatred’, and rightly so. I don’t think he did himself any favours by describing this view as ‘garbage’ – something he later, in effect, retracted (see bottom of the thread) – because it deflected attention from his saying, as he also did, that there are no grounds for complacency. But Chris was making a valid point.

The principal thing is to recognize that the problem of anti-Semitism is now worrying enough for steps to be needed urgently to combat it. There doesn’t have to be complete agreement over either the causes or the extent of it for this to be acknowledged. If there is indeed a tendency on the part of some – maybe including me – to see the danger as worse than it (yet) is, that would perhaps be counteracted if more people, and especially more people on the left, spoke out forthrightly against contemporary anti-Semitism.

Mick Hartley thinks so:

The library shelves previously full of books on Freudian exegesis will now start filling up with books trying to explain how such a load of nonsense managed to occupy such a central place in the intellectual life of the 20th century.

Sign the petition to reverse the Iraqi Governing Council’s Resolution 137 (which would change Iraqi family law to Islamic Shari’a law). Hak Mao has the link.

Police receive a call every minute of every day about an incident of alleged domestic violence, and every week two women are killed by a partner or ex-partner, says the joint report by the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate and the Inspectorate of Constabulary. Yet in a sample of 463 cases to which police were called last year, just 118 were recorded as a crime. The inspectors estimated that, “potentially, a further 142 crimes were committed which were not recorded”… Legislation to stiffen penalties for domestic violence is currently going through parliament.