Twenty members of the al-Farra family are gathered for the photo, but no one is smiling for the camera.
The scene is deceptively tranquil as they sit around a bare wooden table under the trees of the Stella Maris monastery on Mount Carmel, high above the port of Haifa. But it is April 1948, and below them the city is under siege and bombardment by the Haganah, the main Zionist paramilitary organisation that later became the core of the Israeli army.
