scrubbedexpat080

Norm_uk don't think that about Iran or Arab, the "terror" has been created by U.S.A. & Israel. If you watch what happening in Syrian you will know that the most dengirouse & worest country in the world is U.S.A.

I'm not telling that because I don't like U.S.A. nor I want to fight, but I'm looking for peace for my country and others.

Be honest Norm_uk and see the world by 2 eyes not only one.

Oyibopeppeh

The Dean

Hello again, evacuation thread........... always nice to welcome back an old friend.........

OleJanx

All very interesting. Who is this mythical "we"?

And why do I suspect the first evacuation will be sundry bowels?
(followed by diplomatic staff, or is that the same thing?)

littlejimmy

That sounds so Gallic...."dengirouse". Love it.

OleJanx

Actually, it sounds contageous....umm, second thoughts, perhaps you were on the right track after all...

Oyibopeppeh

To the tune of "The Grand Old Duke Of York"

"And he minced them up to the top of the hill and he minced them down again"

Norm_uk

Not sure. A two state solution was already proposed (with Jordan being the other) but the Arabs felt it better to invade Israel. When they lost the population transfer of Jews happened but not Arabs. Instead they use the Palestinians as a proxy weapon against Israel.

I don't know if a Palestinian state would work - the Palestinians are not a pleasant bunch of people...people who sent their children to blow themselves up are not freedom fighters, and the way HAMAS cracked down on the PLO and other groups was right out of the Nazi's books.

In any case as long as people prefer calling countries names instead of providing some workable and sensible solutions nothing much will change. The ultimate issue here is that if Israel is recognised and at peace with all it's neighbours the Arabs will have to admit the middle east is not exclusively all theirs. There are other ethnic groups who will then want their lands back like the Kurds and possibly Assyrians.

Interesting times we live in.

N.

Norm_uk

Only evidence of that is in the bible. And little in the bible can be proven until around the 8th Century BCE. I have not come across Old Testament sites in Saudi but would be interested to see that evidence (because I am a supreme Nerd )

I'd bank on outside evidence like the merneptah stele which most historians agree mentions Israel as a state (in Canaan or the oddly named "Palestine"- a name coming from Aegean invaders who were beaten/absorbed) and people being beaten in a fight with Pharaoh Merneptah around 1200BCE. That's a long time before Arabs had writing and were mentioned in the historical record in any significant way, at least anywhere that wasn't in the Arabian desert.

900,000 Jews were hounded out of the Arab world in the 1940s. Many had lived there before Islam was a religion (Iraq, Yemen and Egypt especially), billions in property and land was lost. Around half went to Israel and the rest spread around the world. Israel took them in gladly (they are called Mizrahim and are as middle eastern as any Arab). The problem is that around the same number of Arabs left Israel when it was created and few were taken in by any Arab state...even fewer were given citizenship and treated equally. A proxy weapon against denial that Jews control their ancient homelands despite 1400 years of Arabian hegemony in the middle east (well, aside from when the Turks ran everything but they don't seem too concerned about that and were happy when we helped kicked them out too!).

What should have been a population transfer ended up in a mulch-generational refugee crisis the Arabs have refused to end. Indeed in the 1960s they invented a new people, the Palestinians and began a campaign to get the entire state of Israel as an Arab majority state. Because the Arabs only have 700 times more land than the Jews and are so hard done by.

Messy situation. What's most amazing is how polarised everyone else in the world is about this.

N.

Norm_uk

All countries have their interests of course.

Iran has a bad government. Iranians are generally nice people. I've been there and have a few Iranian friends - they all hate their leaders and the Islamic revolution.

Persia has been occupied for 1000 years by a foreign culture and religion...I have a feeling that may change one day. The more extreme and insane the Iranian leadership becomes the more young Iranians will turn to their original roots.

N.

Norm_uk

And what country are you from?

N.

shiva

google is your friend but be warned you will have to trawl through reams of links to religious nutters from all sides to get to the actual archeology. oh and curiously a vpn is often needed to see some of the sites. ironic really as the saudis have bulldozed hundreds of early islamic and pre islamic sites.

from a purely logical standpoint it would be foolish to imagine that as the summerians, assyrians, babylonians etc developed, spread, conquered, collapsed etc that the people alluded to in the historical texts (bible, koran, torah, gilgamesh ) etc weren't all pretty much of the same stock anyway and that they lived across the region as a whole, saudi included

OleJanx

Norm, you might be interested in Ukhdud, in Saudi. This is believed to be a Christian city, mentioned in the Qu'ran as a site of a massacre in AD522 ( Sura 85 apparently)
Obviously, to the closed and simplistic Saudi mind, this is 'mamnoo'....

Norm_uk

Will have a look when I have my next regular bout of insomnia for sure.

Doesn't surprise me that a VPN is needed on some of these websites, or that many pre-Islamic and early-Islamic sites have been flattened...I was really surprised when they announced they found a Christian monastery on one of the Abu Dhabi islands which pre-dated Islam to be honest.

I did read once (and you have to be careful what you read online) that Mecca was once a Hindu shrine or at least had a number of local and Hindu deities. It's quite sad that Muslims will drink up what their book tells them their ancestors got up to and actively destroy evidence to the contrary. For our faults in Europe we do try to paint an accurate picture of pre-Christian Europe, good and bad.

N.

Norm_uk

Christianity was in what is now southern Saudi Arabia since at least the 5th Century - Judaism has been there even longer. Jews were still in Yemen (until they were hounded to leave and Israel rescued them) in the 1940s. Needless to say they didn't look like the European Jews in Golders Green but easily blended in with a lot of the locals. Makes you wonder how many Arabs are of converted Jewish stock.

The massacre must be the Yemeni king convert to Judaism, Dhu Nuwas who reportedly attacked and massacred those who wouldn't give up Christianity in the city. Ironic the Koran mentions it as Muslims did plenty of their own massacring against Pagans, Christians and Jews.

N.