Tale of Two Sons

WestBankMama has a really interesting post up that is worthwhile to check out, about an old Arab friend named Mohammed. Excerpts:

The trust they had in him once led to an embarrassing event. My son came home from gan (kindergarden) one day and told me a story. It seems that in the middle of playing one of his friends handed M. a stick, and solemnly asked him to “fix” it for him. When M. asked the child how he wanted him to fix it, the child responded that he needed him to make the stick into a gun.

“Why do you need a gun?” M. asked.

The kid’s response could have been taken out of a Middle Eastern version of “Kids Say the Darndest Things”. Looking straight at M. he replied, “I need it to kill the Arabs!” ...

Although there were families on the yishuv who trusted M. completely, there were those who were furious that we let an Arab walk around freely, and thought it was a huge security risk. The rest of us were in the middle, swinging ambivalently between the need to protect ourselves and our children, and our desire to give M. the trust that he had earned.

In the end we didn’t need to make a decision about how to deal with M.

It was done for us.

Read the whole thing.