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Fearing backlash on Christians in Egypt - II
The ‘Pro-Israel’ Network Behind the Innocence Video
Justin Raimondo, the editorial director of Antiwar.com also believes that the ‘pro-Israel’ network was behind the anti-Islam film. He argues that chances are that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was recruited by someone else, the real originator and driving force behind Innocence. But who is that someone, he asks.
In September 18 piece published under the title “The ‘Pro-Israel’ Network Behind the Innocence Video,” Raimondo pointed out that the idea for just such a movie as Innocence showed up on (Pamela) Geller’s blog in February, in a post entitled “A Movie About Muhammad: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.” Ali Sina, an ex-Muslim and board member of Geller and Spencer’s “Stop the Islamization of Nations,” exhorted Geller’s readers to support his movie project:
“The movie shows Muhammad’s raids, plunders, massacres, rapes, assassinations and other crimes. A small subtitle in the lower right corner of each scene will give reference to the source of the story. This movie is entirely factual. Wherever possible, I copied the Quran, the Sira and the Hadith verbatim. It is a riveting story. Truth about Muhammad is more shocking than fiction.
The world does not know Islam. What is known is a watered down and euphemized version of it that has no bases [sic] in reality. The truth is that Muhammad was a cult leader, much like Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara and Charles Manson. Unlike them he succeeded because there was no central power in the seventh century Arabia to stop him.
“The other good news is that I have been promised a substantial angel financing. I have been daydreaming about this movie for ten years. It was this promise that prompted me into action. I put everything aside for five months, read everything I could about my protagonist, selected the most salient episodes and wrote the script.
“The seed is now sown. Now it’s time to nurture it. What I need is an experienced executive producer, someone who shares my values, to make it happen with professionalism and missionary zeal. I am not thinking of a high budget movie, but given the subject matter, it can become one of the most seen motion pictures ever. (Recall Danish cartoons?)”
This may or may not be the same movie as Innocence, but what’s important here is that the idea of such a provocation — “recall Danish cartoons?” — was percolating in these circles when the movie was in production, Raimondo said adding:
“(Joseph Nasrallah Abdelmasih’s) recent involvement with the Geller-Spencer crowd coincided with a very profitable time for his organization: Media in Christ’s income has recently skyrocketed, according to public records, with receipts totaling under $200,000 in 2009 and prior, rising to $633,516 in 2010 and $1,016,366 in 2011. Where did all that money come from — was it Mr. Sina’s “substantial angel”? Nakoula claims he funded his movie project with money from “over 100 Jewish donors.”
“….We don’t yet know where the money, or the impetus to make the film, came from, but what we do know is this: the driving force behind Innocence was a desire to create an international incident that would bring discredit on the United States, and empower radical Islamists who hate America and everything it stands for. And the promoters of this garbage pose as “patriots”!”
Raimondo argues that free speech has nothing to do with this issue: the President requested of YouTube that they reconsider the video’s place on YouTube in light of their terms of service. YouTube refused, and that’s the end of it. Unfortunately, however, that’s not the end of this imbroglio, the consequences of which we’ll be living with for a long time to come.
There is an ugly sore festering under the skin of the West, and its first manifestation — or should I say symptom? — surfaced when Andre Breivik committed his ghastly crime, slaughtering the attendees at a Norwegian Labor Party youth camp, Raimondo said adding: He, too, wanted to “stop the Islamization of nations,” and his online manifesto cited Geller, Spencer, and the writings of the movement their hateful rantings have energized. The English Defense League — a sorry collection of skinheads, neo-Nazis, and soccer hooligans — which Geller endorses, has mounted a campaign of violent intimidation aimed at British Muslims, inspiring imitators in several European countries. These groups feed off the more radical elements of the Zionist movement: Geller and her supporters claim to be “defending Israel,” and the EDL regularly flies the Israeli flag at their hate rallies.
Raimondo argues that defense of the Jewish state is a major theme of the Islamophobe network: they use it as a shield to deflect criticism. “A key leader of this network is former New Leftist and Black Panther groupie David Horowitz: his “David Horowitz Freedom Center” (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), sponsors Spencer’s “Jihad Watch.” Horowitz’s “Frontpage” site — ablaze with stories decrying the “betrayal” of Israel by the American government and the perfidy of all things Islamic — recently speculated Innocence was created by the very Salafists now leading the protests. Since the video sprang from the same bigoted milieu of which Frontpage is the online Jerusalem, this “theory” isn’t merely ironic — it’s a moral obscenity.”
It isn’t hard to imagine where the money to create this deadly provocation came from, Raimondo wonders and says: Of the many millions in neocon money sloshing around this country, it’s hardly inconceivable a hundred thousand or so would find its way into the hands of a twice-convicted felon and all around dubious character like Nakoula, who is, I suspect, just a con man rather than an ultra-Zionist ideologue like the promoters of his “work.” Although, to be sure, the difference is altogether negligible.”
The fallacy of free speech
When Google was asked to remove the highly inflammatory video, it immediately cited its long established policy of supporting freedom of speech. The Google told the New York Times, that the “Innocence of Muslims” video does not violate terms of service for YouTube regarding hate speech because it is focused on the Muslim religion and not the people who practice it.
However on August 1, Google had no problem removing 1,710 videos and closing their affiliated accounts because "A substantial number of those videos concerned Holocaust denial and defense of Holocaust deniers." Google "closed the user's account within 24 hours" of receiving the complaint by a group that monitors anti-Semitism in Australia, as Esam Al-Amin wrote in OpEd News last week quoting Jewish Press.
People in the U.S. may not be aware of these incidents where hate or disfavored speech was taken down, Al-Amin says adding: “But many people in the Muslim world are aware of such interventions that run contrary to stated principles. Plausibly, they wonder, if foreigners such as the Attorney General of Israel or an Australian monitoring group can get Google or Facebook to shut down videos or close accounts, how can one argue that the President or the Secretary of State cannot make similar requests? They also recall that in 2009 Secretary Clinton intervened and prevailed over the executives of Facebook and Twitter on behalf of the activists of the so-called Green movement in Iran. This is not an argument to advocate closing down accounts or removing videos but simply to illustrate the hypocrisy and double standard practiced by public officials and business conglomerates when dealing with Muslim concerns.”
French journalist Thierry Meyssan argues that Western European states have passed "historical memory" laws which have transformed a historical event—the Nazi destruction of European Jews—into a religious occurrence: the "Shoa" in Jewish terminology, or the "Holocaust" as expressed in Christian evangelical parlance. “Nazi crimes are thereby elevated to the level of a unique event at the expense of the victims of other massacres, including other victims of the Nazis. Questioning the dogma, i.e. this religious interpretation of historical facts, subjects one to criminal penalties, just as blasphemy was punished in the past.”
Many European countries enacted laws in the past three decades that criminalize any speech or writings that question the official accounts of the Holocaust. In 1996 French philosopher Roger Garaudy published his book, The Founding Myths of Modern Israel. Critics charged that his book contained Holocaust denial and consequently the French government indicted him, and shortly thereafter, the courts banned any further publication of the book. In 1998 Garaudy was convicted, sentenced to a suspended jail sentence of several years, and fined forty thousand dollars.
In 2005, English writer David Irving was apprehended in Austria on a 1989 arrest warrant of being a Holocaust denier. He was subsequently convicted of "trivializing, grossly playing down, and denying the Holocaust," and sentenced to three years imprisonment.
As Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich recalls, there is a precedent in the US to curbing free speech when deemed harmful. In a landmark Supreme Court hearing -- Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919) , the actions of Schenck, an anti-war individual who had printed and distributed leaflets in order to discourage enlisting servicemen, was not afforded protection under the First Amendment. The issue before the court was whether Schenck's actions (words, expression) were protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The Court ruled:
" The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic." Holmes argued that "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."
On the fallacy of free-speech Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich also recalls: On October 16, 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Israel Lobby's bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act which requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-Semitism world wide. (It is noteworthy that 4 years later, Republican candidates ran on a platform of promoting hatred of Islam). In line with policies of selective "free speech", in August 2012, California State Assembly passed a resolution (House Resolution 35) against criticism of Israel.
The House Resolution 35, in part said: “….the Assembly recognizes recent actions by officials of public postsecondary educational institutions in California and calls upon those institutions to increase their efforts to swiftly and unequivocally condemn acts of anti-Semitism on their campuses and to utilize existing resources, such as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ working definition of anti-Semitism to help guide campus discussion about, and promote, as appropriate, educational programs for combating anti-Semitism on their campuses….”
The incident exposes the deep vein of anger against the US
Dave Lefcourt, the author of "Deceit and excess in America, how the moneyed interests have stolen America and how we can get it back," argues that the Arab Spring which had the affect of removing the shackles and giving voice to the people in these countries should not be seen as contributing to anti-American demonstrations.
He believes that the motivation behind the video that inspired these protests in Muslim countries was the provocative intentions by an anti Muslim Egyptian American and Coptic Christian who expected his video would likely spark anti American protests in the Muslim world with the larger hope of tainting ALL Muslims as radical jihadists and terrorists.
Yet as happened previously when the American fundamentalist Minister Jones burned the Quran and the American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the Muslim holy book earlier this year that provoked outrage among Muslims, it is readily apparent there are certainly anti Muslim fanatics and ignorant Americans who have no respect for Arabs, Muslims or any of the indigenous peoples in the Muslim world that we have invaded, occupied, committed torture against and killed innocents with our drone attacks and missile strikes, Lefcourt pointed out.
To borrow Prof Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University in Pennsylvania, this incident has exposed the deep vein of anger against the United States that runs through the Muslim world. “This anger is nothing new and we continue to ignore it at our peril. The Muslim world continues to be a tinder box that someone resident in the West, someone like Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, can throw a match into and spark something akin to another 9/11.”
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the chief editor of the Journal of America.
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