To add a bit to that: Greeks and Turks are pretty much physically identical, but one is seen as “whiter” than the other (guess which). The eastern end of the Mediterranean saw all sorts of people from northern Africa and southern Europe because of the ease of sailing across the coast, even with the relative low technology of ships from 3,000+ years ago.
If the jews of today, especially the ones that never left the Levant, are a faithful picture of their ancestors of ~2000 years ago, then it’s not too much of a stretch to assume Jesus could’ve been white, or “white”.
Side note: gotta love (/s) how much importance is still given to skin color. I’d love to see people throwing hex codes around instead of color names. “We don’t like fceadc here!”
Good to know, I had the misconception that you could only get some never specified minerals from freshwater and that distilled water would leave you mostly thirsty.
One thing that helps more than just looking surprised: ask the kid for further details. If it is something you know, you can catch anything they got wrong and ask “is it really like that? i thought it was different!” (keeping your tone in mind is essential, too)
If it’s something you don’t know, they’ll be more than glad to explain. Which can get tiring, but hey, it’s a small price for getting them interested in learning and sharing their knowledge
Not entirely, there is a lot of geopolitical power struggle there as well. Israel was born as a “western puppet” that soon grew and became “too important to abandon”. Without it, the arab nations would be more likely to ignore whatever the western powers demand, as they’d have a hard time reaching them. With Israel, it’s like a gun’s permanently pointed at them and “any funny business” against them means you also have to deal with USA