​The Spirit of Moshe and Munir

The other day in the crush and bewilderment that many of us feel about the terrible situation in the Middle East, I remembered a story aired on CBC Television several years ago about the friendship of two men, Moshe and Munir, one an Israeli and the other a Palestinian. The journalist who brought her report to Canadians was Adrienne Arsenault, then the Middle East correspondent for the CBC and now one of the hosts of The National and the Chief Correspondent for the network.

It was an amazing piece of journalism which made a deep impression on me. Although, I have never been to the Middle East, I have always been concerned about the millions of Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust and, as well, the plight of the homeless Palestinians in the disputed lands in and around what is now Israel.

Remembering that it was Adrienne who had done the story, but not sure when this was, I decided on a whim to email her, using the standard form of email address for CBC employees. I told myself that with her busy job she would not have time to answer my unheralded message.

But in just a few hours, there was her reply in my inbox. She wrote that it was “one of the biggest honours of my career to spend time with Moshe and Munir.”

So, who were these middle-aged men from the Middle East? Their story first aired on Oct. 2, 2007, and Adrienne said she and her crew had worked on it periodically for several years before that. The piece opened with Munir, the Palestinian olive farmer, picking the fruit from trees on his land. Clearly, Munir was angry that a radical Israeli settler, living in nearby occupied lands in the West Bank, had fired a rifle shot that had wounded a friend of Munir.
But Munir said he could not be angry with all Israelis; he had lived and worked in Israel and had gotten to know many Israelis as friends, notably, Moshe, who owned an Israeli swimming pool construction company. Without giving away too much of the story of Munir and Moshe, which readers can “click on” using the You Tube link below, the two men and their families developed an unshakeable friendship.

Then, over a period of what they described as eight to 10 years, they were separated by the gathering antagonism and violence between the Israelis and Palestinians, symbolized by the stark reality of the very high wall, erected by Israel to keep Palestinians out.

With the facilitation of Adrienne and the CBC, and under the watchful eye of the Israeli military, we can see the very heartfelt and emotional reunion of the two men in 2007. Munir cried as he told Moshe how his mother, a commanding presence, had died, and his sister had just fallen ill and died as well.

Described by Adrienne as “ever the philosopher,” Moshe said that it does not matter what people are like when they are born, it is their education, their social relations, and their friendships, that are vital.

The words of these two men in this television piece speak for themselves. The problems of the Middle East remain incredibly complex and ingrained, but words like love, friendship, trust, and loyalty shine through. They offer hope for how members of their two peoples can or could work together based on their common humanity. So, here it is, what I am calling the Spirit of Moshe and Munir.
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