Mick Hartley

Syrian journalist Thaer Al-Nashef, on an Al-Jazeera discussion programme last week, says that the claim that Israel is thwarting democracy in the Arab countries is completely unfounded, and argues that all of the dictatorial and authoritarian Arab rulers are a product of their own Arab societies. He mocks the conspiracy theories that Israel grooms Arab citizens to become leaders of their countries, and points out that Israel is not responsible for the progress or backwardness of Arab societies.

He then takes on the often-repeated claim that Israel's goal is to expand from the Nile River to the Euphrates River. The two blue stripes on the Israeli flag, he points out, represent not those rivers, but the Jewish prayer shawl.

Sati' Muhammad Al-Hajj, the Political Secretary of the Nasserist Unionist Party of Sudan, calmly rebuts Al-Nashef's claim. Israel's goal to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates is not a myth, he says. It's clearly mentioned in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion….