In Israel, even picnics are political...

Our farewell picnic to Ezra Nawi before his prison term for peaceful protest carried a new message to most Israeli picnics.

Picnics like almost everything else in Israel are often political. Oz Shelach underscores this point in his collection of short stories Picnic Grounds, where he describes how a history professor takes his family on a picnic in the pine forest near Givat Shaul, a Jerusalem neighborhood. The professor teaches his son some of the camping skills he learned while serving in the Israeli military, using old stones to block the wind and to protect the newly-lit fire. The stones, we are told, are the remains of a village known as Deir Yassin. More...

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