By Saleh Al-Jaribie Al-Zahrani

When Saddam fired missiles at Riyadh, we used to climb onto the rooftops to watch them.

Young people in Jazan and Najran returned to school in the morning and played football in the evening in the open fields, while Houthi missiles and defense of Saudi Arabia flew over their heads.

In a southern Saudi village, one son died in the morning, while one of the village’s daughters was getting married in the evening.

The father asked two men to help him in the burial of his son, while he insisted on the others to go with the bride to the other village, as part of the traditions.

Our grandfathers used to bury our dead who were killed by the invaders from the Ottoman army and then danced on their graves.

Boys after being circumcised were supposed to perform the traditional dance. The ones who didn’t were considered cowards, in their view.

We do not have death rituals. We bury even our kings in ordinary graves. We do not hold up mourning, nor do flags fly at half-mast.

Abdullah Bin Saud surrendered himself and his family to save the people of Alderaiah from the terrible siege of the army of Ali Muhammad Ali Pasha.

In the legitimate coalition in Yemen, we fought side by side with the Yemeni army in a fierce war for seven years. We did not postpone our work, our events, or our joys.

We did not take revenge, nor did we burn the land despite our ability to do so. Rather, we build and construct in Yemen: roads, schools, and provide the people of Yemen with aid even in the areas controlled by the Houthis.

Abdel Nasser was fighting in Yemen with 70,000 people, trying to overthrow the regime in Saudi Arabia, bombing Jazan, Najran, and Al-Wadi’ah with aircraft, cursing the kings of Saudi Arabia.

He and Sadat, violently, moved cells inside the country, and dropped weapons to them by air. However, we did not abandon Egypt in all of its wars. We supported Egypt with money, weapons, and cut oil supply to the West.

We supported Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran by providing convoys of weapons from the port of Al-Qadimah on the Red Sea to Basra for eight years.

But we also fought against him, paid the war bills and expelled him from Kuwait in 1990. In 2003 America asked us to intervene in occupying Iraq, but we refused.

King Abdulaziz, may God have mercy on him, said: Palestine does not lack men. Just support them with weapons and they will liberate their land. And when the Arabs agreed to fight, he and his sons after his reign sent Saudi soldiers to wars against Israel.

They were side by side fighting with other Arabs in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, despite of the ventures of some rulers and the setbacks they faced, including the June setback in which Abdel Nasser promised to throw Israel into the sea.

But instead Sinai, Gaza, the Golan, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were occupied by Israel.

During those wars, the development in Saudi Arabia never stopped. We didn’t exaggerate in offering condolences to our dead sons and soldiers or the dead soldiers of our neighbors.

I mentioned the above situations so you can understand the Saudi mentality, wisdom and courage, how we think, how we act, support, fight, stand with the Arab rights and advocate their causes.

To give you just an example, Saudi Arabia is the No. 1 financial supporter in the world for the Palestinian issue, more than all the Arab countries together, from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic.

Next comes as financial supporters after Saudi Arabia, are the European Union countries, United States of America, the Arab countries, and other non-Arab countries.

The Saudi financial support between the years 1994 and 2021 alone was more than 3 billion and 460 million dollars. With all that in mind, we do not encourage adventures, neither do we pay their bills.

We do not weep like women. We do not run like mules in the streets and bray like donkeys and then believe that this is the struggle and support!

We act efficiently, without disrupting our work, postponing our joys. We do not care about mourning rituals, even for our dead. We build, work hard enough and invest our resources to be strong in this world...not poor, independent slogan dervishes.

This is our nature and this is our thinking.