In this episode, Rebel News and some of our closest friends have been in Israel and Dubai investigating the consequences of Donald Trump's peace deal between the UAE and Israel. We talk to filmmaker Kian Simone about her experience in the Middle East and how she came to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.
00:00:00.240Investigating the ramifications of Trump having peace break out in the Middle East and Israel through the eyes of a newbie,
00:00:06.540I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:00:08.540These 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,
00:00:35.560a peace treaty between initially the UAE and Israel, but it's spreading across the land.
00:00:41.820And I've been here with my friend, my colleague, my co-worker, my documentary filmmaking partner, Kian Simone, and I've been to Israel.
00:00:51.140This is my third time. For you, it's your first time.
00:00:54.260And it was like watching a baby discover new things.
00:00:58.220And don't take that the wrong way about Israel, because I think you had you had a bit of the same experience I had.
00:01:07.400You know, you come here and you realize the media lies.
00:01:10.080They lie about everything. That's why we have job security.
00:01:12.800But they 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.
00:01:22.820Was it like that for you? Like, did the scales fall away from your eyes in some respect?
00:01:28.540I wouldn't even call it the media in my case and most cases of people under 30.
00:02:42.800And you see, um, the graffiti like I, I like how they they allow graffiti everywhere because they think that in Israel, like that's a right.
00:02:55.100So they allow you to destroy things, but like, and it's, it's different in Israel.
00:02:58.980Let's say you see, uh, uh, stop the bombs or stop bombing Gaza or like just kind of like the, what the lefties would write on something inside Bethlehem where Jesus was born.
00:03:10.060And that's coming from a non-Christian like to have hit the Hitler everywhere on the, on all the walls.
00:03:25.920Um, 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.
00:03:40.060That are according to the United Nations and the international community, whatever that is, calls them illegal.
00:03:46.360But 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.
00:03:53.260And 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.
00:04:01.520And like you said, it literally is just like a town.
00:04:03.680Like 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.
00:04:10.540Like 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.
00:04:18.040Um, and it, it, it, it was really weird that when you were going into that settlement, you could, you couldn't as a Jew or as an Israeli turn right into a certain road, which was literally neighboring that settlement.
00:04:32.520There's a big sign saying, it doesn't say no Jews, but it says no Israelis.
00:04:36.520And it's the Israeli people who put it there because of your safety.
00:04:42.400And 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.
00:04:52.340Um, because the security fence is designed to allow people who living in the Palestinian controlled side into the Israeli controlled side, but it doesn't allow the Israelis, you know, behind the, the big security barrier.
00:05:07.240Here, there are places where Israelis just can go.
00:05:10.600You went to Bethlehem without me, but I've been there twice before.
00:05:13.680Um, did we have to leave our Israeli tour guide behind and get a new one?
00:05:19.720Um, no, he went, he, our tour guide was able to go because he had a very special permit.
00:05:36.080Um, and he was pointing out certain towns that, um, Israeli people just get killed in that he's, that he visits and he brings people to because he has that permanence.
00:05:47.120Last time that we came, I think our tour guide didn't have that permit.
00:05:50.400So 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.
00:05:59.160Um, I did have a different tour guide, sorry.
00:06:57.520And then I come here and I see that, like that it's weird when lefty say like, it's 2023, you shouldn't be like that anymore, but it's 2023.
00:08:07.940And it's, it's really, it's done by the Israeli government because they're doing their best to keep the peace with their Palestinian neighbors.
00:08:15.920Now we're in the UAE and we've seen some amazing things.
00:08:20.200Like 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.
00:08:31.760And he's collected all these things to, uh, I don't want to say honor the Holocaust because who would ever do that, but to respect, uh, the, the Jewish suffering of the Holocaust.
00:08:45.880It'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.
00:08:56.900And the Christians are standing over there, not sure which side that they're supposed to, to pick, but that's, you know, there, there's really, um, tolerance for the Abrahamic family happening in the UAE.
00:09:09.600And it's, I think Donald Trump is responsible for bringing this to, um, and the mainstream, I guess here.
00:09:17.400And he really should have won the Nobel peace prize for it, but his politics were all wrong.
00:09:22.380Um, and it's, it's interesting listening, uh, people talking about like going back to the seventies or even back to when the Holocaust happened.
00:09:30.460Um, it, you kind of get in the media again, um, all of these Arab countries are quote unquote bad for.
00:09:46.600Um, 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.
00:10:14.580We, we read plenty of stories today about, um, Muslims who are considered righteous among the nations that they went to extraordinary measures to save Jews, including doctors in Berlin, um, Albania.
00:10:28.440The only country in Europe whose, uh, Jewish population rose during world war two, because they rejected the idea that their Jews should be expelled.
00:12:16.640Like 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.
00:12:23.240Like from, just from like across the, like across the field, it's not your neighbors.
00:12:30.020Um, like I, 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.
00:12:38.760And these, uh, the, the, the length of an, um, sort of the amount of money and, and effort that Israel had to put into that fence and into those walls.
00:12:48.240Like it, it blew my mind how, and how scary it is to just live there.
00:13:00.100It 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.
00:13:08.760You take all these extraordinary measures to make sure your, 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.
00:13:18.620And then the rest of the world says you have no right to protect yourself.
00:13:35.480Um, we, when we're 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.
00:15:26.160Like I, 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.
00:15:31.640But they also have to be on, not really an offense, but like on guard for China coming into the Middle East.
00:16:33.760One of our speakers said that the way to good relations with Washington runs through Jerusalem.
00:16:39.740And I think all these Arab countries that are now considering signing onto the Abraham Accords realize that.
00:16:45.860And I think it was very savvy of Donald Trump to say, we need to build the strategic alliance with the United States and these peace loving Arab countries.
00:16:55.600Otherwise, China and Russia are going to step up and fill the void.
00:16:58.480I remember watching and seeing all of like the, I guess you call them the conspiracy theorists.
00:17:04.940Whenever one of the, a leader of the free world or whenever someone would come in, they would always touch the Western wall.
00:17:56.020But 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.
00:18:05.660Now, this week's letter comes to us by way of Bruce Atchison.
00:18:10.680He's a very regular viewer of the show, strong supporter of Rebel News.
00:18:14.900We love Bruce at Rebel News and his cat.
00:18:18.200And he sends a letter on last week's show.
00:18:21.080Now 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.
00:18:28.020So I grabbed David Menzies and had a quick chat.