El-Sissi’s uncle, the Haganah member

Asserting Zionist conspiracies in the nefarious tradition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a former Muslim Brotherhood official accused Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of having Jewish origins and being part of a Zionist plot against Egypt.

“I was surprised to learn, from the Algerian Al-Watan newspaper, that el-Sissi is of Jewish origin,” Gamal Nasser said Saturday in an Arabic-language broadcast on Al-Jazeera, where he is a commentator.

“His mother is called Mulaika Titani, and her brother was a member of the Jewish Haganah organization,” Nasser added. “Thus, we see that this man, by any standard, is implementing a Zionist plan to divide Egypt.” (The Haganah was the pre-state precursor of the Israel Defense Forces.)

The program was translated and transcribed by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a nonprofit group that says it seeks to “bridge the language gap between the Middle East and the West by monitoring, translating, and studying Arab, Iranian and Turkish media, schoolbooks, and religious sermons.”

El-Sissi, a devout Muslim who was appointed by president Mohammed Morsi last year to head Egypt’s armed forces, was behind the July 3 ouster of the president, who comes from the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party. El-Sissi said earlier this week he is acting in accordance with the will of the Egyptian people. In recent days, hundreds of Morsi supporters were killed in a military crackdown on protests against the ouster.

In the past week, Israel has been at the center of conspiracy theories in the Arab media surrounding the turmoil in Egypt and elsewhere.

In Egyptian social media, a number of anti-American and anti-Israel cartoons have spread through Facebook and Twitter, including one showing a recognizable Uncle Sam figure wearing a US flag hat along with a man wearing an Israeli flag hat, immersing the Egyptian country in a boiling cauldron filled with blood. Alongside the two men are an additional couple of steaming cauldrons, with the countries of Iraq and Syria drenched in blood boiling inside them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed officials to remain silent on the situation in Egypt, but reports have surfaced that officials have been lobbying their counterparts in the US and Europe to support the interim, el-Sissi-backed Egyptian government.