When my daughters were younger, I told them if we ever got separated and they needed help, ask a grown up with a child, believing that another parent would both know what to do and would respond to a child’s plea for help. My faith in other parents has been renewed by the actions of two mothers and fathers far away and caught up in an unimaginable horror.
Sixteen-year-old Naftali Fraenkel was one of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and murdered by two Palestinians who officials believed were linked to terrorists. The day after he was buried, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, was abducted and killed in retaliation by extremist Israeli Jews.
In the midst of their grief and pain, the parents of both these boys refused to call for revenge and more bloodshed. Rather than shouting to inflict harm on other children and families, these mothers and fathers spoke to the shared experience of parents everywhere, our fears, dreams, and hopes for the safety and blessings of our children.
Hussein Abu Khdeir, Muhammad’s father said, “Whether Jew or Arab, who can accept the kidnapping and killing of his son or daughter? I call on both sides to stop the bloodshed.”
The Fraenkels’ words were, “No mother or father should ever have to go through what we are going through, and we share the pain of Mohammed’s parents … and we hope that calm will return to the streets of our country.”
Early in my children’s lives, I learned that I had to depend on other parents to care for my girls, on play dates, sleepovers, at parties and trips. I might not always agree with another parent’s every decision, but I have an underlying faith that they will do what they think is right to keep my daughters safe.
I trusted other parents to understand how important my children were to me because their children must surely be equally important to them.
In the midst of a violent, angry, dangerous situation, the parents of Naftali and Muhammad saw through the rhetoric, the politics, and their differences in religion to the essence of the moment, that each had a precious, beloved child ripped from their lives and their families.
Their prayers for peace and an end to the violence went unheard as the situation in Israel and Gaza has deteriorated steadily. More children have died as the rockets, mortars, and gunfire continue.
The issues involved seem enormous and insurmountable, but through a parent’s eyes the impact of events are crystal clear, as tiny and precious as a child’s hand. Even in Brooklyn, a father can understand the fear and pain of families far away and their desperate calls for the safety of their children. I have faith it is the same thing all parents pray for every day.
