This morning, when we woke to the terrible news of the murder of the Libyan ambassador, we were also informed – by the Wall Street Journal – that Sam Bacile was “a 52-year-old Israeli-American real-estate developer in California who raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors“.
As the updated story illustrates, the story then began to unravel.
Quilliam credibly claimed that the attack on the Libyan embassy was, in fact, a planned Al Qaeda operation, as did CNN. Israel denied that Sam Bacile was an Israeli.
Meanwhile, nobody – absolutely nobody – can find hide nor hair of this Sam Bacile character. As the day progressed, it became increasingly clear that there was no evidence at all to suggest that he was Israeli or even Jewish, and increasing evidence to suggest that he was of a different cultural and confessional origin. Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic has the best summary:
As part of my search for more information about Sam Bacile, the alleged producer of the now-infamous anti-Muhammad film trailer “The Innocence of Muslims,” I just called a man named Steve Klein — a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, California (whose actual business, he said, is in selling “hard-to-place home insurance”), who has been described in multiple media accounts as a consultant to the film.
Klein told me that Bacile, the producer of the film, is not Israeli, and most likely not Jewish, as has been reported, and that the name is, in fact, a pseudonym. He said he did not know “Bacile”‘s real name. He said Bacile contacted him because he leads anti-Islam protests outside of mosques and schools, and because, he said, he is a Vietnam veteran and an expert on uncovering al Qaeda cells in California. “After 9/11 I went out to look for terror cells in California and found them, piece of cake. Sam found out about me. The Middle East Christian and Jewish communities trust me.”
He said the man who identified himself as Bacile asked him to help make the anti-Muhammad film. When I asked him to describe Bacile, he said: “I don’t know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He’s not Israeli, no. I can tell you this for sure, the State of Israel is not involved, Terry Jones (the radical Christian Quran-burning pastor) is not involved. His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he’s Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign.”
There is more on Israelycool.
Next up: the cast of the film issued a statement saying that they were duped into believing that this was a film about some generic Middle Easterner – which does explain why the name “Mohammed” is overdubbed on the film, as you’ll see if you watch it.
So, who is behind this film?:
I asked him who he thought Sam Bacile was. He said that there are about 15 people associated with the making of the film, “Nobody is anything but an active American citizen. They’re from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, they’re some that are from Egypt. Some are Copts but the vast majority are Evangelical.”
So, there you go. Nice use of the “Jew” as cover, guys. Play on one form of bigotry to cover for another.
Back in the United Kingdom, the Hamas groupie and prominent cheerleader for the Blood Libel cleric, Raed Salah, Asa Winstanley has been in overdrive on Twitter.
4h Asa Winstanley @AsaWinstanley
Reason for an Israeli-US made film to be uploaded to YouTube alongside the unfounded claim that Copts were behind it? Zionism=sectarianism
I’ll remind followers once again of the long-standing Zionist conspiracy to stoke sectarianism:
“Provocation of dissension between Christians and Muslims” — item 6 of a 1920 Zionist Exec plan to combat Palestinian opposition to Zionism
Source of previous tweet: Budget proposal to the WZO, 5 May 1920, CZA Z4/2800, as cited in Hillel Cohen, “Army of Shadows”, p. 17 #pt
He continued:
No doubt US planners were perfectly aware of the risks of something like Benghazi attack happening but considered it an acceptable risk
And concluded…
There are more idiots today on Twitter than usual, for some reason.
Oh dear. I wonder where Asa will go next?
It is looking very much as if some sort of coalition of Evangelical and expat Copts were behind this film. Asa Winstanley is himself an Evangelical Christian, and was formerly Christian Youth Minister at the Wembley Church of Christ. He clearly shares their very deep obsession with Jews.
Assuming that Copts were involved in the production of this film, some might care to argue that any expressions of bigotry against Muslims should be excused as a product of their desperate plight: much in this same way that the genocidal antisemitism of Hamas is similarly excused.
Not I.
UPDATE
Now the truth is out.
“Sam Bacile” is neither Israeli nor Jewish. He is an expat Coptic Egyptian called Nakoula Basseley Nakoula:
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he was manager for the company that produced “Innocence of Muslims,” which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad and may have caused inflamed mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a shadowy production group behind the film.
Nakoula denied he directed the film and said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam Bacile. But the cell phone number that AP contacted Tuesday to reach the filmmaker who identified himself as Sam Bacile traced to the same address near Los Angeles where AP found Nakoula. Federal court papers said Nakoula’s aliases included Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.
…
Nakoula denied he had posed as Bacile. During a conversation outside his home, he offered his driver’s license to show his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records checks by the AP subsequently found it and other connections to the Bacile persona.
Nakoula is a convicted fraudster:
Nakoula, who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.
The YouTube account, “Sam Bacile,” which was used to publish excerpts of the provocative movie in July, was used to post comments online as recently as Tuesday, including this defense of the film written in Arabic: “It is a 100 percent American movie, you cows.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Leigh Williams said Nakoula set up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen identities and Social Security numbers, then checks from those accounts would be deposited into other bogus accounts from which Nakoula would withdraw money at ATM machines.
It was “basically a check-kiting scheme,” the prosecutor told the AP. “You try to get the money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a fraudulent account. There basically is no money.”
I wonder if this film was financed by this fraud.
