Arab Semite

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-1-700-year-old-inscription-identifies-great-city-of-elusa-1.7021537

Al-Jallad began pulling up every inscription that mentioned migrating in search of rain, and soon he had a long list of terms that had resisted translation. Comparing them with the Greek, Aramaic, and Babylonian zodiacs, he started making connections.  Dhakar  matched up nicely with  dikra,  the Aramaic word for Aries, and  Amet  was derived from an Arabic verb meaning “to measure or compute quantity”—a good bet for the scales of Libra. Hunting for Capricorn, the goat-fish constellation, Al-Jallad found the word  ya’mur  in Edward Lane’s “ Arabic-English Lexicon ,” whose translation read, “A certain beast of the sea, or . . . a kind of mountain-goat.” He stayed up all night, sifting the database and checking words against dictionaries of ancient Semitic languages. By morning, he had deciphered a complete, previously unknown Arabian zodiac. “We’d thought that they were place names, and, in a way, they were,” he told me. “They were p...

Is Saudi Arabia Zion?   08/07/2016 11:48 am ET | Updated 2 hours ago James Dorsey Senior fellow, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies By James M. Dorsey Kamal Salibi, one of the Arab world’s foremost contemporary historians, kicked up a storm when he concluded in a 1985 linguistic exegesis that Judaism’s Zion was not located in Israel but in Saudi Arabia. Israelis, Jews, Saudis, Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians found common ground at the time to denounce Mr. Salibi in stark terms. Israelis, Jews and evangelists charged that Mr. Salibi’s bombshell book, The Bible Came from Arabia, constituted an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish State and undermine its historic claim to modern day Israel. Israeli historians and rabbis denounced the theory as mythology, science fiction and nonsense. Saudis, afraid that Israelis might take Mr. Salibi seriously and attempt to colonise the mountains of Sarawat, which the scholar believed was the Jordan v...

Boston Review — Haroon Moghul: Son of Mary For Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, humanity begins in roughly the same way: God creates Adam and Eve, gives them a garden to call home, and tells them to keep away from a certain tree. But Satan sweet-talks the two into disobeying and God exiles them for their transgression. This original act of disobedience is repeated time and again by Adam and Eve's descendants. When they stray too far, God picks prophets from among them to call them back. The serious divisions among the three great religions begin with Jesus. Jews, of course, do not recognize Jesus as divine or as a godly messenger. For Christians, Jesus is the son of God who died on the cross to save us from sin—the original sin of Adam and Eve. Muslims take a middle view: Jesus is one in a long line of prophets beginning with Adam and culminating in Muhammad. All prophets—including Abraham and the prophets sent to the Children of Israel—ar...

From a recent Der Spiegel article. " The commandment "Make yourself no graven image" has long been strictly followed in the Arab world. There are very few statues of the caliphs and ancient kings of the region. The pagan gods in the desert were usually worshipped in an "aniconic" way, that is, as beings without form."

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Anti-Westernism in the Middle East : I just finished the interesting book by Saqr Abu Fakhr titled The Wise Heretic (in Arabic about Kamal Salibi).  It is quite an interesting ...

Mecca for the rich: Islam's holiest site 'turning into Vegas' - Middle East, World - The Independent : 'via Blog this'

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: Kamal Salibi: dead : Kamal Salibi has died. He is the well-known Lebanese historian who did his PhD in the early 1960s at the University of London under Bernar...

"Angawi said he calculated that over 300 historical buildings in Mecca and Medina have already been destroyed . Also, the Washington-based Gulf Institute has estimated that, in the past two decades, 95 percent of the millennium-old buildings in Mecca have been demolished."

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian archaeologists said Wednesday they had found the long-lost capital of the Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, a breakthrough for research on the ancient Jewish state. "This is a hugely important discovery," expedition organiser Dmitry Vasilyev told AFP by telephone from Astrakhan State University after returning from excavations near the village of Samosdelka, just north of the Caspian Sea . "We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that period -- how the Khazars actually lived. We know very little about the Khazars -- about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture," he said. The city was the capital of the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic peoples who adopted Judaism as a state religion, from between the 8th and the 10th centuries, when it was captured and sacked by the rulers of ancient Russia.

"In recent years some galleries have refused altogether to accept works in which there are images that evoke Arabs," Halabi says. "The feeling is that people do not want to talk about the conflict, about politics. As though what they want is to curl up in some quiet, comfortable, pretty bubble. Curators are fed up with Palestinians , with the [separation] fence, with the intifada. I think Israeli art is increasingly focused on the aesthetic. The galleries nod to the rich, the bankers, and look for pretty art that the buyers can hang at home."

Israel Versus Africa.

The Philistines, who long inhabited the coastal plans of Palestine throughout Israelite time periods in Palestine, are newly "discovered" by Israeli archaeologists to differ from their cruel portrayal in the Hebrew Old testament. A Ha'aretz article reports the findings: "There's no doubt that the social organization of the Philistines was much more developed than that of the Israelites , and apparently of the Canaanites as well." and this: "Research into the dispersal of Philistine cooking methods among various populations in Israel shows that the Philistines spread their culture beyond the areas under their control. While the two cultures never mixed, the early Hebrews apparently copied many important components of the Philistine lifestyle. "

More doubts it seems on the historical events of Masada, which Israeli propagandists have used as a rallying cry for Zionism. One quote: The original archaeologists at the site, Zias said, "had the story and went around trying to find the proof." No concrete evidence for the Zealot suicide has been found, he said. Sound familiar? Go ahead and read the article here .

NYTimes has a story interviewing Dr. Zahi Hawass, archeologist with the Egypt antiquities authority. Among new discoveries in the Sinai, he refutes any evidence for Jewish migration toward Palestine across the Sinai. The journalist makes some annoying assertions like: He was saved by the pharaoh’s daughter, raised in the royal court, discovered his Jewish roots and, with divine help, led the Jewish people to freedom. Then a good admission: But archaeologists who have worked here have never turned up evidence to support the account in the Bible, and there is only one archaeological find that even suggests the Jews were ever in Egypt. And finally my favorite quote by Dr. Hawass: “If they get upset, I don’t care,” Dr. Hawass said. “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”

The typical Zionist bias against other Semites is shown in this article, although the discovery is still important. The Arabs came with no knowledge of the sea, and drafted craftsmen, sailors and shipbuilders from the local population," Drori said. Did the Arabs of coastal Arabia and Yemen and the gulf region not ever go fishing? But perhaps Drori is simply stating the obvious, that the Palestinian inhabitants at that time, coastal dwellers of Palestine and descendents of Canaanites had significant seafaring experience. Link to Discovery article.

Israel has quite deliberately destroyed the 800 year old An-Nasr Mosque in Beit Hanoun, Gaza province of Palestine. The mosque was built in year 637 AH and named after the Umm An-Nasr battle between Palestinian and Muslim armies and Crusaders' armies. Destruction of places of warship is a war crime defined under the Geneva Conventions.

It’s been a while since i’ve been able to update. The usual excuses. A few stories of importance or at least excitement recently. Giant Camel bones found in Syria , estimated to be 100,000 years old. These guys were as big as giraffes or elephants. It seems the animals were mostly hunted for food rather than used as transportation. And seperately, at the lovely Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, a talk on November 5th with the following abstract. The Israeli Antiquities Authority has a history of excluding, and even destroying non "Israelite" archaeological finds in Palestine. This find by the IAA bolsters evidence that the majority of civilizational activity in Palestine in the 9th century BC and beyond were in the coastal regions where the indigenous Canaanite population has always lived, and continue to today as modern Palestinians. "Yavneh, a city some 20 km south of Tel Aviv, was a Philistine city on the border with Judah. It was occupied for numerous...

From Kahlil Gibran: Published July 1926. I believe in you, and I believe in your destiny. I believe that you are contributors to this new civilization. I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America. I believe that you can say to the founders of this great nation, "Here I am, a youth, a young tree whose roots were plucked from the hills of Lebanon, yet I am deeply rooted here, and I would be fruitful." And I believe that you can say to Abraham Lincoln, the blessed, "Jesus of Nazareth touched your lips when you spoke, and guided your hand when you wrote; and I shall uphold all that you have said and all that you have written." I believe that even as your fathers came to this land to produce riches, you were born to produce riches by intelligence and labor. I believe that it is in you to be good citizens. And what is it to be a good citizen? ...