Nakoula Basseley Nakoula taken in for questioning

Reuters reports: A California man convicted of bank fraud was taken in for questioning on Saturday by officers investigating possible probation violations stemming from the making of an anti-Islam film that triggered violent protests in the Muslim world.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, voluntarily left his home in the early hours of Saturday morning for the meeting in a sheriff’s station in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

“He will be interviewed by federal probation officers,” Whitmore said. He said Nakoula had not been placed under arrest but would not be returning home immediately. “He was never put in handcuffs… It was all voluntary.”

Nakoula, who has denied involvement in the film in a phone call to his Coptic Christian bishop, was ushered out of his home and into a waiting car by several sheriff’s deputies, his face shielded by a scarf, hat and sunglasses.

Facebooktwittermail

Divided we stand: Libya’s enduring conflicts

International Crisis Group: The violent death of the U.S. ambassador and three of his colleagues is a stark reminder of the challenges Libya still faces and should serve as a wake-up call for the authorities to urgently fill the security vacuum.

Divided We Stand: Libya’s Enduring Conflicts, the latest International Crisis Group report, warns that although Libya often is hailed as one of the more encouraging Arab uprisings, recovering faster than expected, it is also a country of regions and localities pulling in different directions, beset by intercommunal strife and where well-armed groups freely roam.

“Because the country lacks a fully functioning state, effective army or professional police, local actors have stepped in to provide safety, mediate disputes and impose ceasefires”, says William Lawrence, Crisis Group’s North Africa Project Director. “But ultimately, these actors cannot take on the state’s role in implementing ceasefires and ensuring conditions of peace. Truces remain fragile, and local conflicts are left frozen or fragile rather than truly resolved”.

Qadhafi’s longstanding divide-and-rule strategy set communities against one another, each vying for a share of resources and the regime’s favour. Some towns grew wealthy thanks to connections with the ruling elite; others suffered badly. Meanwhile, the security apparatus at once fomented, manipulated and managed intercommunal conflicts.

Once the lid was removed, there was every reason to fear a free-for-all, as the myriad of armed groups that proliferated during the rebellion sought material advantage, political influence or, more simply, revenge. This was all the more so given the security vacuum produced by the regime’s precipitous fall.

Proper management of the country’s many local disputes will require significant reform of both military and civilian aspects of conflict resolution, notably better coordination between local notables and the government and better coordination among the Libyan Shield Forces, the army and the groups that make up the border guard. It also demands bottom-up reform of the army and police.

The challenge will be to do this even as the newly elected General National Congress and future constitutional drafting committee are focused on establishing the legislative foundations of a new state.

“Until now, central authorities have acted chiefly as bystanders, in effect subcontracting security to largely autonomous armed groups”, says Robert Malley, Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program Director. “This is not sustainable. The new government needs to take concrete steps to reform its security forces and establish structures of a functioning state. Anything less will perpetuate what already is in place: local disputes occurring in a fragmented and heavily armed landscape, with the ever-present risk of escalation”.

Facebooktwittermail

Can the U.S. stop the wave of Muslim protests targeting its embassies?

Tony Karon writes: Egregious insults like the Innocence of Muslims film would not be so easily translated into rage at U.S. power were it not for the simmering long-term rage at Washington over its invasions of Muslim countries, its support for Israeli governments and Arab despots, its drone strikes and more.

Deep anger at U.S. foreign policy is the extended preexisting condition that geopolitical Obamacare has failed to significantly alter; the outrage at an offensive film is the opportunistic virus that, when combined with the preexisting condition, creates a crisis. Instances of American Islam-bashing are used to prove that the policies and actions of the U.S. that most anger ordinary Arabs are not simply discrete foreign policy choices driven by self-interest and other agendas but rather expressions of a deeper animus toward Islam itself — a proof that functions as a chemical catalyst that can bring residual anger to a boil.

Yes, it’s always manipulated by cynical opportunists driven by narrow political agendas, but the outrage itself is real, and it’s hardly confined to a movie. Without the pre-existing anger, in fact, the film would be like a detonator without dynamite. Only the combination of the two creates the explosion.

So in that sense, President Obama’s Republican critics are not wrong in suggesting that this week’s upsurge in protests represents, at least in part, a response to the Administration’s handling of the Middle East or even to what vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Friday called ”mixed signals” from the White House. But where Ryan and those echoing him are wrong — egregiously, spectacularly wrong — is in suggesting that the protests are a response to a retreat from “moral clarity and firmness of purpose,” watchwords of the Bush era. On the contrary, the Muslim world was up in arms against the U.S. on a sustained basis for most of the Bush presidency, precisely because of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its unconditional backing of Israel as it pummeled Palestinians and the obvious hypocrisy of a policy of proclaiming democracy and freedom while coddling friendly despots. If the Arab world is angry at the “mixed messages” coming from the Obama Administration, that’s because the President in Cairo in 2009 had promised a break from Bush-era policies yet failed on many fronts to deliver it. It’s not the changes Obama’s made since the Bush era that drive Arab anger; it’s his Administration’s many continuities with Bush-era policies in the Middle East.

Facebooktwittermail

What Ambassador Chris Stevens would have wanted us to do in the Middle East

Robin Wright knew Chris Stevens for many years: A week before his murder in Benghazi, we exchanged e-mails about my plans to visit Libya in a few weeks. A State Department travel warning last month cited increasing assassinations, car bombs and gunmen abducting foreigners. Clashes among militias “can erupt at any time or any place in the country,” it cautioned.

Yet Chris saw the potential over the peril. He was not among those declaring that the Arab Spring had only made the region worse. Quite the reverse. He understood that the Middle East is moving into the second phase of its traumatic transition as Arabs vie to define a new order.

So as the United States deployed gunships and drones this past week to track his killers, I started thinking about what Chris would have wanted the United States to do — about his death, the latest turmoil and in the years ahead. I suspect his message would have been: Waver not.

But he was less an advocate of U.S. influence than of U.S. enabling. Two days after his murder, Chris was supposed to inaugurate the first “American Space” in Libya. That’s why he went to Benghazi. The center would offer a library, computers with free Internet access, language classes and films.

In prepared remarks he never got to give, Chris was going to say, “An American Space is not part of the American Embassy. It is owned, operated, and staffed by our Libyan partners, while the United States provides materials, equipment, and speakers. An American Space is a living example of the kind of partnership between our two countries which we hope to inspire.”

In this fragile phase, as Libyans and other Arabs reclaim control of their lives from autocrats and colonial rule, Chris was pressing Washington to let the newly empowered take the lead.

He was famous for his “pleasant silences,” Feltman said. “He would sit there as if he had all the time in the world. Yet it was comfortable enough in ways that the interlocutor started talking more.”

After a brief visit to Benghazi in August 2011, Feltman went to say farewell to Ali Tarhouni, the NTC’s minister of oil and finance. Chris suggested that they all “hang out” a bit. During one of Chris’s silences, Tarhouni began to outline the rebels’ military plan for the takeover of Tripoli. Residents in several neighborhoods were going to rise up simultaneously, then militias from other areas would move into the capital. The NTC wanted Tripolitanians to feel ownership, not as if armed gangs from rival provinces were moving in. It all played out the next day, and Gaddafi fled the capital.

Two days after Chris died, President Obama vowed: “We are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice. . . . No act of terror will go unpunished.”

But Chris would almost certainly have urged his bosses to hold off on extraterritorial intervention.

Facebooktwittermail

Anti-western violence gripping the Arab world has little to do with a film

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad writes: The maelstrom of anti-western violence in the Arab world has little to do with an anti-Islam propaganda film released on YouTube.

It has more to do with decades of perceived western imperialism – and the organisational skills of the Salafis, known for their no-compromise, literal interpretation of the faith.

Such rightwing Islamists were wrongfooted by the Arab spring. For years, the jihadis and Salafis thought they had a monopoly on revolution and were the only viable opposition to the Arab dictators.

When the regimes were threatened by popular uprisings, the Salafis took weeks and months to respond. In Libya they initially called for the demonstrators to support the ruler of the land, Muammar Gaddafi. As it became clear that the revolutions would not instantly deliver the brighter future people had marched for, the Salafis began to use that discontent to their advantage.

They are brilliant at agitating on the streets – working on the unemployed, the frustrated, people who feel life should be better. In Tunis, the Salafi agitation began months before the propaganda film – the Innocence of Muslims – surfaced. They attacked cinemas, secularists and artists. In Bahrain and Syria they worked along sectarian lines, and in Egypt they launched vicious confrontations with the Coptic Christians. [Continue reading…]

In Cairo, protests outside the U.S. embassy appear to have lost support from the Salafists and a demonstration at Tahrir Square only drew a few hundred.

The Wall Street Journal reports: “Egyptians don’t like to protest this way,” said Hisham Al Ashry, a self-identified adherent to hardline Salafi Islam and one of the main speakers at the Salafi-led protest outside the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday. “They want to protest against America, they want to protest against the embassy, but not this way. They want a peaceful protest to express their opinions.”

Many self-identified Islamists in Tahrir Square distanced themselves Thursday from the scene at the U.S. Embassy. They said it was the work of nonpolitical hooligans who are often in their young teens and in several instances have joined in violent clashes with police after what started as peaceful protests.

“Egyptians refuse this,” said one of the protesters in Tahrir Square who called himself Abu Safiyan. He invoked from memory the Prophet Muhammed’s invocation to protect foreign emissaries.

Most of the crowd that could be seen throwing rocks at police officers along the Nile River a block from the U.S. Embassy appeared to be in their teens. Few were dressed like Mr. Abu Safiyan, whose long beard and starched white gown characterizes many adherents to Salafi Islam.

Facebooktwittermail

The politics of outrage is still an irresistible temptation

Issandr El Amrani writes: One of the hopes – for me at least – of the Arab uprisings is that they will lead to a qualitative change in the substance of Arab politics. I mean this not just in the sense that undemocratic regimes will be undone, replaced by real politics with real stakes and rotation of power. I also mean that I hope the uprisings can short-circuit some old tropes of regional politics, about identity, wounded pride and angry impotence.

Alas, this week’s embassy protests and senseless killings show there is still much farther to go.

Protests and incitement about books, films or statements deemed insulting to Islam have for decades been a staple tool of Islamists, and of both religious and secular governments in the region.

Consider the 2005 Danish cartoon crisis, when thousands took to the streets against offensive cartoon depictions of Prophet Mohammed – months after they had been published. This was fomented in good part by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which, at a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, refocused the region’s attention on a newspaper published four months earlier.

That resulted in protests (apparently backed by both governments and the Islamist movements with which they usually fought). In Syria and Gaza at least, governments apparently allowed several European embassies to be raided. The Danish embassy in Pakistan was also bombed. By early 2006, over 100 had died either as a result of the attacks or because of the efforts to control the riots worldwide.

Other examples quickly come to mind, from the 1988 fatwa by Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign in 2000 against Syrian novelist Hayder Hayder’s Banquet for Seaweed.

These usually served political purposes – no doubt Khomeini used the Rushdie fatwa to distract Iranians from the consequences of the terrible war with Iraq he prolonged; the Muslim Brothers loved to embarrass the government for having published Hayder’s book. And in 2005, the Mubarak regime made use of the Danish cartoon crisis just as it was coming under increased domestic and external pressure to democratise.

Islamist movements (even if they are not alone in this) have shown that they excel in using an insult (real or perceived) as part of their culture wars: the tactic is to portray themselves as the sole defenders of the faith. In this week’s case, they chose to do so even though the film in question was released only online and no one would have heard of it or paid attention to it without their efforts. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Benghazi airspace closed for several hours to enable U.S. drone patrols

As attacks on U.S. embassies around the region proliferate, President Obama is under increasing domestic political pressure to make some kind of demonstration of American strength. He’s in serious jeopardy of following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and authorizing a drone strike that “brings justice” to the killers of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Even if — unlike for Clinton — this time around the targeting happens to be accurate, the use of missiles to expedite a legal process will do no more than reinforce the perception that Americans always believe, might is right.

And therein lies Obama’s dilemma: he’s campaigning to win votes from Americans many of whom have a quasi-religious conviction in the righteousness of American power, and yet his actions are likely to have an immediate impact on many more millions of non-Americans who, for good reason, think that the United States has only one tool for engaging with the world: the use of military force.

Can Obama resist the temptation to use drone missiles for the sake of winning a few votes? We’ll see.

The Libya Herald reports: The airspace over Benghazi was closed for several hours this morning, reportedly to enable unmanned aerial drones to patrol overhead.

The manager of Benghazi’s Benina International Airport told reporters earlier today that the airspace was closed shortly after midnight for security reasons.

“Benghazi airspace has been closed since 00:30 GMT for routine security checks” Taba Mohammed said, without elaborating further. The airspace is said to have reopened around 12:15.

There have been reports that flights were grounded as part of an operation to prevent suspects involved in Tuesday’s fatal attacks on the US consulate from using the airport as an escape route.

However, a UK-based risk and intelligence company has confirmed to the Libya Herald that it believes the primary purpose of the closure was to enable patrols by American drone aircraft.

“We believe our intelligence is accuarate”, said Cassie Blombaum, an intelligence analyst at the Inkerman Group.

“We have multiple sources, including video footage of Libyans actually spotting the drones”.

Drones were reported to have been deployed over Libya following Tuesday’s attacks, which resulted in the death of the American ambassador together with three of his staff, but Blombaum says that the surveillance aircraft have likely been operating in the country over a much longer period. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Ansar Al-Sharia to be disbanded ‘by force if necessary’ as first arrests made in connection with U.S. consulate killings

The Libya Herald reports: Ansar Al-Sharia, the militant group believed to be behind Tuesday’s fatal attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, is to be disbanded, by force if necessary, a reliable source close to Prime Minister-elect Mustafa Abushagur has told the Libya Herald.

“We are negotiating to dismantle it,” the source said. “We don’t want bloodshed but if they do not agree we will have to use force.”

This morning, the group’s Benghazi headquarters are closed and there is no visible sign of activity.

The army had previously put out its own statement saying the group was to be disbanded, but this was subsequently removed. The announcement had been posted on the army’s Facebook page, and it is suspected the move was deemed premature given no official word has been given from the government on the matter.

Yesterday, officials said that four men had been arrested in Benghazi in connection with the murders, all of them reportedly members of Ansar Al-Sharia. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

The sacred, the profane — and the meaningless

Mahmoud Elbarasi writes: The murder of Ambassador Stevens will forever be a stain on the annals of post-Qaddafi Libyan history. For the first time in my life, I can not pass on a Libyan tragedy of this magnitude directly to the “brother leader”. Libya is our responsibility now.

In taking this responsibility, it is imperative that we strive towards intellectual honesty and that we preserve the goals of the revolution.

Since the revolution was an attack on fascism, it might follow that any kind of authoritarianism would not be tolerated. This has not been the case. In the weeks leading up to the ambassador’s death we saw over and over again the forced Talibanesque fascist destruction of artworks, books and grave sites (my own grandfather’s headstone was destroyed outside of Magroun).

The perpetrators of these crimes went through no democratic process to obtain legitimate destruction permits (if such a thing even exists); instead, they chose to walk into any building they found offensive and simply destroyed what they pleased.

Weeks later, this same mentality was deadly, with the American consulate burned. A great friend of Libya who fought with us against Qaddafi was murdered in cold blood. The ringleaders of this mentality will use any excuse to incite hatred and violence in their quest for power. In this case, an obscure, low-rent, d-list film did the trick. While the destroyers of Libyan cultural heritage walk freely among us, an American who went out of his way to help rid us of the tyrant lies dead.

Take away the haughty pseudo-religious declarations and language, the self-appointed “theological rights”, and these men are nothing more than the old regime in new clothes. It is time to call a spade a spade. We are dealing with fascists. Joseph Stalin was a fascist and an atheist; Osama bin Laden was a fascist and a Muslim. It is like cancer: it can infect and overtake every walk of life.

These are power-hungry bullies, not enlightened spiritual men. Muammar Qaddafi dressed up and played “intellectual” or “poet” or “revolutionary”, but in the end he was none of these things. He was a fascist. He was in it for the money and the might. Any man who attempts to dominate by force another man’s mind or body is the same, be it in a general’s uniform or in religious robes.

Facebooktwittermail

Slain U.S. envoy ‘understood Palestinian situation’

Ma’an news agency reports: Palestinian negotiators on Thursday remembered US ambassador Christopher Stevens as fair-minded and described his death in Libya as a major loss for American foreign policy.

Stevens, who was killed with three colleagues late Tuesday in an attack on US institutions in Benghazi, served a decade earlier as a political officer at the US consulate in Jerusalem.

“It’s just tragic,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a PLO leader and veteran negotiator with Israel. “It’s very sad. I thought he was a person who was not just intelligent but also caring.”

As a mediator, the Arabic-speaking envoy “understood the Palestinian situation well. He was very understanding and he listened; he didn’t repeat talking points,” Ashrawi said in an interview.

“He could have made a big difference in peoples’ lives and, really, to America’s standing and credibility. His loss is a loss not only to US foreign policy but also to its standing with other states.”

Stevens and three other Americans died after gunmen attacked the US consulate and a safe house refuge in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday night. The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the prophet Mohammad.

Demonstrators later attacked the US embassies in Yemen and Egypt in protests against the film, and American warships were moved closer to Libya.

Senior PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat blasted Stevens’ murder as an “ugly act of terror.”

“He was a really close friend of the family, and I am really shocked,” Erekat told Ma’an. “He was murdered in a very ugly act of terror, and it’s so despicable.”

Erekat said he had personally communicated to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the Palestinian people’s condolences.

“Such a good man, such a great loss. His heart was in the peace process, and I’m sure his heart was also in the building of Libya,” Erekat said.

Facebooktwittermail

What was really behind the Benghazi attack?

Hisham Matar writes: Were the attacks on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, which killed the American Ambassador and three other diplomats, motivated by the film that the assailants, and many news networks, claim was their motive? Was it really religious outrage that made a few young men lose their heads and commit murder? Have any of the men who attacked the consulate actually seen the film? I do not know one Libyan who has, despite being in close contact with friends and relatives in Benghazi. And the attack was not preceded by vocal outrage toward the film. Libyan Internet sites and Facebook pages were not suddenly busy with chatter about it.

The film is offensive. It appears that it was made, rather clumsily, with the deliberate intention to offend. And if what happened yesterday was not, as I suspect, motivated by popular outrage, that outrage has now, as it were, caught up with the event. So, some might say, the fact that the attack might have been motivated by different intentions than those stated no longer matters. I don’t think so. It is important to see the incident for what it most likely was.

No specific group claimed responsibility for the attack, which was well orchestrated and involved heavy weapons. It is thought to be the work of the same Salafi, ultra-religious groups who have perpetrated similar assaults in Benghazi. They are religious, authoritarian groups who justify their actions through very selective, corrupt, and ultimately self-serving interpretations of Islam. Under Qaddafi, they kept quiet. In the early days of the revolution some of them claimed that fighting Qaddafi was un-Islamic and conveniently issued a fatwa demanding full obedience to the ruler. This is Libya’s extreme right. And, while much is still uncertain, Tuesday’s attack appears to have been their attempt to escalate a strategy they have employed ever since the Libyan revolution overthrew Colonel Qaddafi’s dictatorship. They see in these days, in which the new Libya and its young institutions are still fragile, an opportunity to grab power. They want to exploit the impatient resentments of young people in particular in order to disrupt progress and the development of democratic institutions.

Even though they appear to be well funded from abroad and capable of ruthless acts of violence against Libyans and foreigners, these groups have so far failed to gain widespread support. In fact, the opposite: their actions have alienated most Libyans.

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was a popular figure in Libya, and nowhere more than in Benghazi. Friends and relatives there tell me that the city is mournful. There have been spontaneous demonstrations denouncing the attack. Popular Libyan Web sites are full of condemnations of those who carried out the assault. And there was a general air of despondency in the city Wednesday night. The streets were not as crowded and bustling as usual. There is a deep and palpable sense that Benghazi, the proud birthplace of the revolution, has failed to protect a highly regarded guest. There is outrage that Tripoli is yet to send government officials to Benghazi to condemn the attacks, instigate the necessary investigations and visit the Libyan members of the consulate staff who were wounded in the attack. There is anger, too, toward the government’s failure to protect hospitals, courtrooms, and other embassies that have recently suffered similar attacks in Benghazi. The city seems to have been left at the mercy of fanatics. And many fear that it will now become isolated. In fact, several American and European delegates and N.G.O. personnel have cancelled trips they had planned to make to Benghazi. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Associated Press and others: guilty of a blood libel?

Here’s a first — citing The Hollywood Reporter: If initial reports that the anti-Muslim film that triggered riots in Libya and Egypt is the work of an Israeli filmmaker supported by Jewish donors are incorrect, then the media is guilty of a “blood libel,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said Wednesday.

He said that the media will have to answer for its role in spreading controversial and possibly false information about the makers of the purported film Innocence of Muslims, which ridicules the prophet Muhammad, without thorough fact-checking.

Cooper specifically cited the Associated Press, which reported on a phone interview with a man who identified himself as Sam Bacile and claimed to be an Israeli-born Jewish writer-director who made the film with the backing of 100 Jewish donors. Subsequent reports have cast doubt on the filmmaker’s identity, claiming that the man might not be either Jewish or Israeli and is using a false name.

The AP has continued to report on the film, most recently tying a California Coptic Christian named Najoula Basseley Nakoula to the film. According to that report, Nakoula denied he directed the film and said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam Bacile. But the cellphone number that AP used to contacted Bacile traced to the same address near Los Angeles where AP found Nakoula. The report also cites court papers that show Nakoula’s aliases included Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.

In the midst of the riots in Libya, an attack on the U.S. consultant [sic] resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other staffers. Cooper blamed the diplomat’s death and the incidents in Egypt on terrorists who were looking to send a message on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “If it wasn’t a Jew who made [Innocence of Muslims], then we have blood libel on the part of the media for failing to do its due diligence,” he said. “The fact someone out there ascribed this to Jews is classic anti-Semitic blood libel.”

Thanks to Rabbi Cooper for stating the “facts”!

It’s funny how when people make unsubstantiated assertions they so frequently claim they are facts.

Two days after the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, facts are still in short supply, but still, I think it’s possible to engage in some fruitful analysis while scrutinizing the claim that a classic anti-Semitic blood libel has been committed.

Based on AP’s current reporting it seems probable that the film was made by an Egyptian Coptic Christian. The trailer includes several clues that point in that direction — the depiction of Christians being persecuted by Muslims and a reference to the “Islamic Egyptian police” — and now Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, reported to be a California Coptic Christian, appears as though he may have previously dubbed himself as “Sam Bacile” and claimed he was an Israeli.

As an Islamophobic Coptic Christian, did Nakoula assume an Israeli identity so that he could accomplish a two-for-the-price-of-one attack on Muslims and Jews?

I doubt it. It’s seems much more likely that he imagined his cause would be better served here if it was aligned with Israel than with Egypt’s Coptics, the latter being a much more obscure cause in the eyes of most Americans.

As for Associated Press propagating the “blood libel” — all it was doing was reporting what it was told by a heavily accented man who called himself Bacile and said he was an Israeli. (I’ll admit being mildly frustrated that the AP reporter referred to his “thickly accented” voice without venturing an interpretation of the origin of this accent. Of course it was safer not to hazard a guess.)

But then there’s a broader question: for those of us who did focus on those details of the report — the “Israeli” producer and the “Jewish” donors — is that attention an indication of an anti-Semitic/anti-Israeli bias? (As far as I’m aware the only news report that actually highlighted the Jewish donors angle of the story was one appearing in the Times of Israel, not an outlet one would expect to have an interest in propagating blood libels. Note: ToI later changed the headline but the original headline is retained in the URL.)

It might be if there was no reason to make a Jewish/Israeli connection with Islamophobia — but that connection is well documented. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Jews in general are Islamophobic, but simply that the anti-Islam movement in America has a disproportionate number of Jews among its leaders — Pamela Geller, David Yerushalmi, Daniel Pipes, and David Horowitz, to name just a few.

I would also note that the Jewish community is well aware of the dangers that are posed by such hatemongers. The Anti-Defamation League has identified Geller’s “Stop Islamization of America” as an extremist organization. Geller’s partner in this operation, Robert Spencer, is a Melkite Greek Catholic.

Cooper says: “If it turns out the filmmaker Sam Bacile is not a Jew, then this is a very successful ploy for which the price tag has already been paid by American diplomats and the Jewish community.”

To call it a ploy is paranoiac and also misleading. The protests in Libya and Egypt were in response to an “American” film disparaging Islam. The details of an “Israeli producer” and “Jewish donors” were only introduced after the attacks on the two U.S. missions had already occurred, and each detail came into question within hours of its appearance.

Maybe if he was less obsessed with threats to Jews and more concerned about victimization in general, instead of leaping up to accuse others of blood libels, the rabbi could acknowledge that the targets of victimization these days are much more often Muslims than Jews and the dominant prejudice of this era is not anti-Semitism, it is Islamophobia.

Facebooktwittermail

Some Syrian activists angry about Arab outrage over Muhammad video

The Los Angeles Times reports: Some Syrian anti-government activists expressed frustration Wednesday that a controversial video belittling the prophet Muhammad is generating more outrage among Arabs than the rising death toll within Syria.

Comments on social media sites by some opposition activists said the protests over the video in Cairo and Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans were killed, epitomize a focus on symbolic and religious issues versus a relative indifference over the desperate plight of Syrian civilians.

“The only thing that seems to mobilize the Arab street is a movie, a cartoon or an insult, but not the pool of blood in Syria,” wrote one Syrian activist on Twitter.

Since anti-government protests broke out in March 2011, at least 17,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by the security forces of President Bashar Assad and rebel forces, according to United Nations figures.

“One thing is clear,” tweeted Shakeeb Jabri, a Syrian activist. “Syrians are quite pissed off at those who protested the Mohammad movie and not Assad’s shelling of mosques.”

Facebooktwittermail

Conspiracies of convenience: what’s behind the film fracas?

Hani Shukrallah writes: I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I strongly sense conspiracy in the whole sordid “film maligning the Prophet” fracas, which, in a few hours, claimed the lives of three American diplomats and delivered a devastating blow to the Arab revolutionary upsurge and to the new democratic and pluralistic awareness that both lay behind that upsurge and was its most precious product.

Let me hasten to explain, however, that I use the questionable term, conspiracy, not in the sense that everyone from the makers of the film to the hysterical demonstrators that attacked the American missions in Cairo and Benghazi are in cahoots; nor do I base my argument simply on “who benefits most”, which almost invariably is the conspiracy theorist’s most crucial analytical tool.

WhatI really mean by “conspiracy” here is that the Prophet Muhammad is in fact wholly secondary to the real motives of the various parties to the ugly and bloody brawl. Yet, somewhat like the conspiracy theorist, I base my argument here more on a reading of the events and their context, rather than on concrete, tangible facts.

To use detective story parlance, what I present below is largely “circumstantial” evidence, leaving it the readers to judge for themselves whether it is sufficiently compelling.

My first suggestion in this respect is that the makers of the film had deliberately set out to goad Muslims into just such violent and irrational reactions as we have seen in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere.

It’s been tested many times before, and even if we can’t blame the penchant of certain influential political and ideological forces among us for ignorance and stupidity, we can still argue that those who would set out to trigger such responses are in possession of a very clear manual setting out how to do it, and the broad outlines of expected outcomes.

We need only recall the 2005-6 Danish cartoons episode. The insignificant Danish newspaper that triggered the hullabaloo had been transparently out to trigger a reaction from Muslims, and a reaction it got. I personally have not the least doubt that the Christian fundamentalist preacher who publicly set a copy of the Qur’an on fire was also deliberately out to goad Muslims into a reaction.

The obvious, outward motive of such attempts is not difficult to discern: to show Muslims as irrational, violent, intolerant and barbaric, all of which are attributes profoundly inscribed into the racist anti-Muslim discourse in the West.

And, it’s a very safe bet that there will be among us those who will readily oblige.

I can guess at two additional motives, one of an immediate, specifically targeted nature, and the other considerably more general and strategic in nature. America is hurtling towards presidential elections in which Barak Hussein Obama is running for a second term. For large sections of the American Christian Right (closely allied to rightwing Zionism), Obama is, if not the anti-Christ, than at the very least a Muslim mole planted in the White House.

For his part, Obama, from the very start of his presidency, had set out to douse the fires of the “clash of civilizations” then still raging curtsey of Messrs Bush and Bin Laden, among others. An editorial in the New York Times commenting on Obama’s famous address to the Muslim world from Cairo University, lauded him for having “steered away from the poisonous post-9/11 clash of civilizations mythology that drove so much of President George W. Bush’s rhetoric and disastrous policy.”

To reignite “the clash” in some form serves to bolster the American Right as a whole, the American Christian Right (which is a mainstay of the Republican Party) specifically, while at the same time undermining Obama, who at best had acted to bring it to an end, and at worst is “a bloody Muslim” himself.

A much broader motivation, which does not exclude Obama as target, is to tarnish, even to deny the very existence of an Arab Spring. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

4 protesters reportedly slain in clashes at U.S. embassy in Yemen

The Los Angeles Times reports: Hundreds of Yemeni protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Sana and started fires on Thursday, another eruption of violence in a series of protests sweeping the Middle East and elsewhere over an online trailer for a film mocking the Islamic prophet.

Four protesters were killed and more than 30 were injured, some of them severely, after security forces fired gunshots and lobbed tear gas into the air in an attempt to scatter the demonstrators, a Yemeni security source said on condition of anonymity.

Infuriated protesters smashed security office windows and broke past barriers, hurling stones at buildings and setting two cars on fire outside. Demonstrators tore down the American flag and lifted a white banner saying, “There is no god but Allah and his messenger is Muhammad.” Graffiti sprayed on the walls read, “For the prophet.”

“I went to this demonstration to defend my religion and to denounce this crime, which we consider a great violation against the divinity of Islam and its symbols,” said protester Mohamed Ahmed.

Others demanded that the embassy be shuttered. “It is not the first time they insulted the Koran and Islam, and I think it is about time to close the U.S. Embassy and kick out its ambassador,” another demonstrator told The Times.

Witnesses said Yemeni security forces guarding the embassy had stepped aside at first, allowing protesters to breach the grounds before opening fire. Reaching the embassy gate, which is normally heavily guarded, typically requires passing both two armed vehicles and a checkpoint, making it difficult to pass. Protesters didn’t enter the main offices of the embassy.

Facebooktwittermail

Scowcroft, Brzezinski call for clear thinking on military action on Iran

National Security Network reports: Today a senior group of bipartisan security experts at the highest levels – retired Cabinet secretaries, diplomats, military leaders and intelligence specialists – released a comprehensive study on the potential costs and benefits of a military strike on Iran. The group issues a sober warning that “a foundation for clear thinking about the potential use of force against Iran” is lacking in the public discussion to date. Signatories include Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard L. Armitage, Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Chuck Hagel, Gen .Anthony C. Zinni, Leslie H. Gelb, Lee H. Hamilton, Ellen Laipson, Adm. William Fallon, Amb. Thomas R. Pickering, Amb. William Luers, and others. Other analysts have recently sounded the same alarm. While the Iran Project report explicitly does not make policy recommendations, CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman concludes in his recent study, “The best way out is successful negotiations.”

A military strike likely to delay, not prevent a weapon – while also increasing Iran’s motivation to attain a bomb. The Iran Project report finds, “U.S. policy statements indicate that the objective of military action against Iran would be to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. … a military action involving aerial strikes, cyber attacks, covert operations, and special operations forces would destroy or severely damage many of Iran’s physical facilities and stockpiles. But in our judgment, complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear program is unlikely; and Iran would still retain the scientific capacity and the experience to start its nuclear program again if it chose to do so.” The group echoes conclusions of Israeli and U.S. intelligence by concluding, “We believe that extended military strikes by the U.S. alone or in concert with Israel could delay Iran’s ability to build a bomb by up to four years—if the military operation is carried out to near perfection, with all aircraft, missiles, and bombs working to maximum effect. A military strike by Israel alone, with its more limited military capacity, could delay Iran’s ability to build a bomb for up to two years. The distinction between preventing and delaying Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon would be a critical one, when considering the objectives of war.”

The Iran Project signatories add, “we believe that military action probably would reduce the possibility of reaching a more permanent political resolution of concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, we believe that a U.S. attack on Iran would increase Iran’s motivation to build a bomb, because 1) the Iranian leadership would become more convinced than ever that regime change is the goal of U.S. policy, and 2) building a bomb would be seen as a way to inhibit future attacks and redress the humiliation of being attacked.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

California Coptic Christian, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, claims role in anti-Islam film

The Associated Press reports: The search for those behind the provocative, anti-Muslim film implicated in violent protests in Egypt and Libya led Wednesday to a California Coptic Christian convicted of financial crimes who acknowledged his role in managing and providing logistics for the production.

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 cellphone 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 told the AP that he was a Coptic Christian and said the film’s director supported the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims.

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.

The AP located Bacile after obtaining his cell phone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the U.S. who had promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt’s Christian Coptic population has long decried what they describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the country’s Arab majority.

Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., who burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, said he spoke with the movie’s director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. He said he has not met the filmmaker in person, but the man contacted him a few weeks ago about promoting the movie.

“I have not met him. Sam Bacile, that is not his real name,” Jones said. “I just talked to him on the phone. He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity. He was quite honestly fairly shook up concerning the events and what is happening. A lot of people are not supporting him. He was generally a little shook up concerning this situation.” [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail