Sheila Gunn-Reid, a 25-year-old Canadian, recounts her three trips to Israel—where she saw Bethlehem’s Christian heritage erased by anti-Israel graffiti and security fences—contrasting it with Dubai’s private Holocaust museum. She questions why Western brands claim pro-Palestine support but avoid Palestinian areas while noting Israelis’ daily life-threatening risks from neighbors, like bulletproof drink-fetching. Now viewing Israel as critical for global stability against threats like China, she muses about joining the IDF to defend freedom and capitalism, dismissing last week’s media critique as irrelevant compared to real-world ideological shifts. [Automatically generated summary]
Investigating the ramifications of Trump having peace break out in the Middle East and Israel through the eyes of a newbie.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
These last 10 days, Rebel News and some of our closest friends have been in Israel and Dubai investigating the consequences of Donald Trump negotiating the Abraham Accords, a peace treaty between initially the UAE and Israel.
but it's spreading across the land.
And I've been here with my friend, my colleague, my coworker, my documentary filmmaking partner, Kian Simoni.
And I've been to Israel.
This is my third time.
For you, it's your first time.
And it was like watching a baby discover new things.
And don't take that the wrong way about Israel because I think you had a bit of the same experience I had.
You know, you come here and you realize the media lies.
They lie about everything.
That's why we have job security.
But I think a lot of the fake news that we deal with in the rest of the world was that template was sort of solidified in Israel.
Was it like that for you?
Like, did the scales fall away from your eyes in some respect?
I wouldn't even call it the media in my case and most cases of people under 30.
It's really just like peer pressure.
Three years ago, not only was I pro-Palestine, but anti-Israel.
And I think that that's even further than most.
It's a cool, it's cool to say free Palestine.
It's cool to say it and you don't understand what that really means.
And free them from what?
And yeah, like from what?
Seriously, just being there.
You know, it's upsetting being inside of Bethlehem.
Like it's an upsetting place.
It's not nice anymore.
Right.
It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's scary what they made me think.
And I say they, and that's really just my friends.
Yeah.
What they made me think about Israel.
Yeah.
You mentioned Bethlehem.
Now, many people might not know, but Bethlehem used to be a Christian town.
Now it's behind the security fence.
And it's a majority Muslim town.
The church of the Nativity, the site of the birth of Christ, it's, you know, surrounded by mosques.
But it's not nice behind the wall, is it?
It makes me sad.
No, and you see the graffiti.
Like I, I like how they allow graffiti everywhere because they think that in Israel, like that's a right, you to write to protest.
They'd rather you destroy something than be violent.
Right.
So they allow you to destroy things.
But like, and it's, it's different in Israel.
Let's say you see stop the bombs or stop bombing Gaza or like just kind of like the, what the lefties would write on something.
But inside Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, and that's coming from a non-Christian.
Yep.
Like to have Hitler everywhere on all the walls.
Like that is just, it's freaky.
Yeah.
It's it's scary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know, I know.
Another thing that you got to do was something that the first time I came to Israel, I couldn't really get my head around what I saw in the media about the so-called settlements that are, according to the United Nations and the international community, whatever that is, calls them illegal.
But you go to these settlements and you're like, well, this is just a nice little town with the university and a hospital and schools and jobs.
And somebody somewhere far away has said, no, actually, that's just a place where Jews can't live, which seems kind of anti-Semitic to me.
Yeah.
And like you said, it literally is just like a town.
Like if you had a told, which I, when you were doing an interview there, that was me learning for the first time that that was an illegal place.
Yeah.
Like that was just a town to me with a new mayor that we were going to get, like, them were going to get.
Like it was just like a normal place.
Yeah.
And it was really weird that when you were going into that settlement, you couldn't, as a Jew or as an Israeli, turn right into a certain road, which was literally neighboring that settlement.
There's a big sign saying, it doesn't say no Jews, but it says no Israelis.
And it's the Israeli people who put it there because of your safety.
Like that's just, that's freaky too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Going back to Bethlehem, what, you know, like when the left calls Israel an apartheid state, I would tend to agree with them, but not in the way that they think, right?
Because the security fence is designed to allow people living in the Palestinian controlled side into the Israeli controlled side, but it doesn't allow the Israelis, you know, behind the big security barrier.
There are places where Israelis just can't go.
You went to Bethlehem without me, but I've been there twice before.
Did we have to leave our Israeli tour guide behind and get a new one?
No, he went.
He, our tour guide was able to go because he had a very special permit.
Okay.
And he kept emphasizing that he has a very special permit that allows him to go.
And like, I think that just that emphasis really just proved that point that, yeah, if you are Israeli, you can't be there.
Yeah.
And he was pointing out certain towns that Israeli people just get killed in that he's that he visits and he brings people to because he has that permit.
And it's shockingly scary.
Yeah.
Last time that we came, I think our tour guide didn't have that permit.
So we had to at the security fence get rid of him and then bring a Christian tour guide so that we could go to these Christian holy sites that are behind the wall.
We did have a different tour guide.
Sorry, we did have a different tour guide.
Like he wasn't able to be the guide.
He was just able to come and make sure that everybody was staying together and stuff like that.
So he wasn't able to do the work.
Yeah.
Now, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's, you know, Yankee Pollock behind the camera rightly points out, and I was in there, so I'll leave you to explain this.
Abby Yamini, our colleague, who's an Israeli citizen because he served in the IDF and he has an Australian passport, he couldn't go behind the security fence to Bethlehem.
I think what's just as messed up as that is that he wouldn't want to go.
Yeah.
Because it's literally your life that you're playing with just because of who you are walking around.
Like we, we, I, I live in Canada and we, I've been to every level of a protest or peaceful to not peaceful to violent.
Sure.
And like I've been in places where people don't like each other in Canada and I think that that is bad.
And then I come here and I see that.
Like that it's weird when lefties say like it's 2023, you shouldn't be like that anymore, but it's 2023.
You shouldn't be like that anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And up on the Temple Mount, like the holiest place in all of Judaism, we saw religious and secular Jews requiring a police escort.
Now, the police escort isn't necessarily because they might be attacked, but they could be.
The police escort is the Israeli government making sure that they don't do something insightful on the Temple Mount.
And the insightful thing they might do is pray.
And that's crazy.
That's the holiest place.
It's like preventing me as a Catholic from going to the Vatican to St. Peter's.
But Jews really, they're restricted up there.
And it's not even, again, it's not even necessarily just religious up there.
Like you can't bring a flag, an Israeli flag.
You're in Israel.
Yeah.
You can't have a flag.
Abby has this Israeli tattoo and he has to cover up his tattoo.
Yeah.
Imagine being in Canada.
There's a section in Calgary that you just can't have your flag.
It's nuts.
Yeah.
And it's really, it's done by the Israeli government because they're doing their best to keep the peace with their Palestinian neighbors.
Now, we're in the UAE and we've seen some amazing things.
Like today we went to the Museum of the Crossroads of Civilization and it's a private collection where the man who runs it, very obviously a Muslim, and he's collected all these things to,
I don't want to say honor the Holocaust because who would ever do that, but to respect the Jewish suffering of the Holocaust, it's astounding to see that level of tolerance because, you know, we're told in the Muslim world that that's not a thing, that it's just the Jews and the Muslims hate each other and the Christians are standing over there not sure which side that they're supposed to pick.
But that's, you know, there's really tolerance for the Abrahamic family happening in the UAE.
And it's, I think Donald Trump is responsible for bringing this to the mainstream, I guess, here.
And he really should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for it, but his politics were all wrong.
And it's interesting listening people talking about like going back to the 70s or even back to when the Holocaust happened.
You kind of get in the media, again, all of these Arab countries are quote unquote bad for.
Yeah, there was always division and that wasn't the case.
Yeah, no, it wasn't, especially here.
And even though there was no Abraham Accords back when the Holocaust was happening, like they were the ones who were letting Jews in.
And there was other Arab countries who were closer that were turning them away, knowing and wanting them to get knowing and wanting them to get killed.
And, you know, that's like literally, I think it was in just off of Israel where they were trying to flee to and the Arabs were saying, no, you can't come here when they knew what was happening where they were coming from.
And then here they say, yes, come in, please.
Like, we'll.
Yeah.
Yeah, we read plenty of stories today about Muslims who are considered righteous among the nations and they went to extraordinary measures to save Jews, including doctors in Berlin, Albania, the only country in Europe whose Jewish population rose during World War II because they rejected the idea that their Jews should be expelled.
They were inviting Jews.
They were saving Jews.
And that's a story that's never told because they don't want that story told.
They, the mainstream media and the people who divide us, because they do want to divide us.
They want us never talking to each other, thinking that we'll never get along and there's no way we can ever find a path forward.
And you're not told, you're not taught that in school.
Like you're not even taught a Muslim aspect to the Holocaust at all.
Yeah.
Like not even in a good or bad way.
Like to me, when I'm growing up, I just think of, okay, happened in Europe.
Like I, I didn't even know, and this is going to shock you.
Like I didn't go to Sunday school or anything.
I didn't even know that Jews lived in the Middle East.
Like that's where did you think they were from?
Europe.
Like they were all they were in Germany, you know?
Yeah.
And then they weren't in Germany anymore.
They had to leave or like the Holocaust, right?
Like I literally, I feel so stupid admitting that and I didn't want to, but I think that that's how much of an eye-opening that this was.
That I didn't even know that.
Like I thought Israel, I knew that they were here a long, long, long time ago, but not always here.
Yep.
Does that make sense?
Sure.
A little embarrassing.
No.
What's the number one thing like that that surprised you about being either in Israel or the UAE?
Surprised me.
I don't know if it was like if it was necessarily a surprise.
I think it was more of a shock, like going to that western wall and listening to the commander Danny Chierson.
He was speaking about what they had to do to combat what was happening on the other side of the wall.
On the Israeli side, they have to put bulletproof everything just because people get shot when they go to the kitchen for a drink at night.
Just from like across the, like across the field.
Your neighbors.
It's like a backyard, really.
Like, I think that that was really just like the eye-opener of, wow, that person is 20 feet away and they want to kill you for just because of who you are.
And these, the, the length of an, sort of, the amount of money and effort that Israel had to put into that fence and into those walls, like it, it blew my mind how scary it is to just live there.
Yeah.
It's still, I can't even put words to it.
It's, it's so close.
Like it's so close.
It is your neighbors shooting at you when you go to get something out of the fridge.
And then you build a fence to try to stop them.
You take all these extraordinary measures to make sure your fence is culturally sensitive, that you can catch the people before they try to climb the fence so that you don't have to shoot them.
And then the rest of the world says you have no right to protect yourself.
That's the part that blows my mind.
You know, I have one more thing that I think is the surprise.
When we went to quote unquote Palestine and into like, I guess it was just off of Bethlehem.
You mean Judea and Samaria?
There we go.
We, when we were going through, so like me looking back at, you see all of these companies, you know, whatever, Ben and Jerry's or you see all of these companies who are like, oh yeah, pro-Palestine, Free Palestine, through Israel, blah, blah, blah.
There is no, everything in that town is like it is like going into a knockoff mall.
I know.
Like there's no real store.
It's stars and bucks coffee.
Yeah.
Starbucks coffee is like a anti-whatever.
And they're like, yeah, we pre-Palestine.
It's like, why don't you go there then?
Yeah.
Why aren't you there?
Yep.
Right.
I think that one was like the big, the only thing that I saw that was like on brand was Coca-Bola.
Yeah.
And they're just everywhere.
I don't even think they have to let it.
Like, it's just, you know what I mean?
Like, that's, that was what blew my mind.
I thought that they would have companies there supporting them and helping them because that's what they say they do.
Yeah.
But they don't.
They just pull out of the region entirely or they pull out of Tel Aviv and they're like, look, we saved everybody.
Good job, Ben and Jerry's.
Kean, thanks so much for coming on the trip.
You've been working behind the camera, working really hard to document the trip.
I've been doing my best to take pictures of you to document your trip as you take pictures of everybody else.
But I'm just so glad that I got to watch you just learn everything for the first time because I remember that feeling.
I literally was thinking like, I would join the IDF for a bit.
Like I would just, I think I would do that.
Would Join IDF for Chicks00:02:21
You'd do it for the chicks.
No, no, no.
I think I like I really noticed that not only is Israel like a good country, I think it's the most important country in the world.
I do.
And for stability.
And it's not even just for the Middle East.
Like Israel is the only line of defense from China coming in.
Yeah.
Like that's like, I don't think I understood how close that kind of stuff is.
Yeah.
Like I know that there was like terrorist cells all over the Middle East and Israel was kind of pushing them back and just really protecting themselves.
But they also have to be on, not really an offense, but like on guard for China coming into the Middle East.
Like they have to use the West.
I always see and I never understood.
Sorry, I'm going to quickly rant.
Yeah.
In America, like even people on the right are like, we need to, you know, pull our support from Israel.
We need to stop it.
It wasn't like an anti-Semitic thing.
It was just like when people talk about we need to just worry about our country and not other countries.
I think I've always kind of been like that too.
Me too.
About we need to stop worrying about other countries and fix ourselves.
But like I would support money going to Israel to defend it and to like push offense and democracy into the Middle East.
Like I, I would, it's where I would want my sacrifice money to go.
Because we're fine.
Like I said, we have our problems in Canada.
But in comparison to what's going on, you're like, I want more stability.
I want more Israel being able to not expand into like taking things, which everybody says they do.
But like the ideology of what Israel stands for, because it's not just about Jews.
Yeah.
It's about freedom.
It's about freedom.
It's about capitalism too.
One of our speakers said that the way to good relations with Washington runs through Jerusalem.
And I think all these Arab countries that are now considering signing on to the Abraham Accords realize that.
And I think it was very savvy of Donald Trump to say, we need to build this strategic alliance with the United States and these peace-loving Arab countries.
Otherwise, China and Russia are going to step up and fill the void.
I remember watching and seeing all of like the, I guess you call them the conspiracy theorists.
Whenever one of the leader of the free world or whenever someone would come in, they would always touch the Western Wall.
Yeah.
And like the whole like, oh, the Jews are controlling everything.
I always wondered like, why do they do that?
Why do they touch that wall?
Like, isn't it just a religious thing?
If you're not Jewish, why are you touching the wall?
Bruce's Alien Letter00:02:49
That wall is the most important wall ever.
And like, I, I put the, the Jew cat, what's it called?
Kippah.
Kippah.
I put it on and I touched the wall.
Yeah.
And like two years ago, I was like, what are you doing?
Why would you do that?
Yeah.
Now it's so like, that's how far I've come.
We've come to the portion of the show where I invite your viewer feedback on like the mainstream media.
I actually care about what you think about the work that we're doing here at Rebel News.
It's why I give my email address right now.
It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.
But if you are watching us on one of the other platforms where you've sat through an ad and you're watching the free version of the show, leave a comment there as well.
Sometimes I go looking over there.
Now, this week's letter comes to us by way of Bruce Atchison.
He's a very regular viewer of the show, strong supporter of Rebel News.
We love Bruce at Rebel News and his cat.
And he sends a letter on last week's show.
Now, last week's show, we filmed on the fly where we were at a Roman ruin, but I wanted to make sure I met my obligation to our subscribers.
So I grabbed David Menzies and had a quick chat.
And Bruce writes, Hi, Sheila.
Thanks for doing your show, even though you had to shorten it.
I sure understand about tight schedules and slow internet speeds.
Oh boy.
How far will this trans insanity go?
Now, part of my interview with David was about his, I don't want to say stunt.
It was a very important story that he did that was before its time when he dressed as a cat and entered himself into a cat show.
Anyways, Bruce writes, I predict that some people might identify as aliens.
They might justify murder as being mere extermination since they consider humans to be lower forms of life.
Well, there are people who already consider that about the unborn.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
It's already come to that, Bruce.
I wanted to come on our trip to Israel, but I spent the money on a metal roof and metal cladding for the garage.
You know what?
Good.
Otherwise, I'd have found a foster for Delta, that's Bruce's cat, and joined you.
I also knew just inflation would make the job price soar into the stratosphere if I waited to get the renovation done.
Stay sane or die trying, Bruce Acheson.
Well, Bruce, I'm glad that you made a good choice for your money.
I think working on your house is really important.
And yeah, Justin True is making the cost of everything just soar through the roof.
But the good news is maybe you could come on the Rebel Cruise at RebelNewsCruise.com.
We haven't really announced it yet, but there are more opportunities to travel with us on these fact-finding missions going forward.