CALENDAR
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E
HAVE
VIDEO
GAMES
TREATED
NAZIS ALL
WRONG?
THE PLAYER, E7
Paintbucket GamesA teen is abducted off a street in
East Jerusalem. Time is of the es-
sence if authorities hope to find
him alive, and grainy surveillance
footage is all they have to go on.
The biggest hurdle in the case,
however, isn’t the blurry camera-
work. It’s the hardened predisposi-
tions of those watching the tape.
An Arab views the recorded ab-
duction and is sure the culprits are
Jews. He can tell by the way they
look.
A Jew watches the murky im-
ages and theorizes that the men in
question are Arabs. He can always
spot an Arab by the way he walks.
They see what they want to see,
like the extremist abductors who
saw a mortal enemy in the inno-
cent 16-year-old they snatched,
drove to the outskirts of the city
and burned alive.
HBO’s bold, gripping mini-
series “Our Boys” is based on real
events from summer of 2014, when
three Jewish teenagers were kid-
napped and murdered by Hamas
militants. A nation on edge
erupted into protests and riots, its
loudest voices calling for venge-
ance. Within days, the charred re-
mains of a new abductee, Arab teen
Mohammed Abu Khdeir, were
found in the Jerusalem Forest, en-
raging the Palestinian community.
The 10-part drama follows Isra-
eli authorities’ investigation into
Abu Khdeir’s murder, exposing
complex human stories on all sides
of the tragedy with exceptional
candor. The series also builds the
case for how a never-ending cycle of
revenge thwarted justice and
sparked the 50-day Gaza war.
“It’s a historical event that
changed everything. I can speak
about Jerusalem before the Mo-
hammed Abu Khdeir murder and
after the Mohammad Abu Khdeir
murder. It changed Israel as we
knew it,” says Tawfik Abu Wael,
who co-created “Our Boys” with
executive producers Hagai Levi
and Joseph Cedar.
A co-production of HBO and Is-
rael’s Keshet Studios, the cable gi-
ant’s first entirely Hebrew-Arabic-
language series to air in the U.S.
took four years of painstaking re-
search and the guidance of crea-
tors who represent opposing sides
in a multifaceted conflict — Abu
Wael is Palestinian, Levi and Cedar
are Israeli Jews.
All but one of the drama’s main
characters are based on real peo-‘Our
Boys’
walks a
political
tightrope
As Trump and ‘the Squad’
feud, HBO offers a limited
series that confronts the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
LORRAINE ALI
TELEVISION CRITIC[See‘Our Boys,’E5]Sheryl Crow and I are sipping mugs of green tea in the living room of her ele-
gant home on a sprawling Nashville property, not far from Music Row. A gigantic Renaissance-style
painting of a biblical scene towers majestically over the sofa; a piano sits under a vintage sign reading
MASSAGE, and art books are stacked carefully on the coffee table (photographer Kelly Klein’s
“Horse,” one by realist painter Andrew Wyeth). The lush woods enveloping the property peek
through the church-like lancet windows. ¶ The beauty of the many tastefully rusted mirrors and
antique candelabras feels almost overwhelming. And yet the tea pulls me back and away: to that
time, 20 years ago, when Prince covered her bongo-flecked hit “Everyday Is a Winding Road,” mak-
ing it slap anew — changing the lyric “I’ve been living on coffee and nicotine” to a less filmic but surely
more healthful “compliments and herbal tea.” ¶ I mention this, to Crow’s amusement. “I actually
dreamt about Prince the other night,” she says in her serene Southern accent — she left her native
Missouri for L.A., originally, at 24 — and recalls the time in the late ’90s when he invited her to his
home-studio complex, Paisley Park, to hang. They tracked vocals and harmonica for his metaphysi-
cal funk jam “Baby Knows” before taking over the stage at First Avenue. ¶ “It felt like two days in
an alternative universe that revolved around being inspired and musical,” she says, with a tinge of
awe. That year, Crow and Prince met up at the Lilith Fair tour, where they dueted “Everyday”: she in
a Bowie T, he in violet, their small frames huddled around a single mike. In her
AT HOME INNashville, singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow has a new album she insists will be her last, a duets-filled “Threads.”
William DeShazerFor The TimesIF IT MAKES
HER HAPPY
Sheryl Crow’s career has always traveled a winding road
BYJENNPELLY>>>
[SeeCrow, E4]