Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Al Qaeda releases video of Jewish hostage in Afghanistan. Why?

Warren Weinstein, an American Jewish contractor was kidnapped on August 13, 2011 in Lahore, Pakistan. In December, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of Al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for Weinstein’s kidnapping.

A month later, reports suggested that Weinstein was being held by “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants in North Waziristan.” In May 2012, a video of Weinstein was released by Al Qaeda. During the video, Weinstein said, “My life is in your hands, Mr. President…If you accept the demands, I live; if you don't accept the demands, then I die."

A few days ago, Zawahiri implied in a new video that Weinstein was still alive. Today, Al Qaeda released a new video of Weinstein in which he appeals to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene.

Here is the video, and below is a transcript.

My name is Warren Weinstein. I am 71. I’m a consultant. I was working in Pakistan when I was captured by the Mujahidin. I appealed to the President of the United States and the American government to intervene on my behalf and to seek my release.

I am the father of two daughters, I have a wife, I’m a grandfather, and I was hoping I would be able to again see my family alive.

Unfortunately, President Obama and the American government have shown no interest in my case. Did not respond and have in no way tried to be responsive to and accept the demands of the Mujahidin.

Therefore, as a Jew, I am appealing to you, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the head of the Jewish State of Israel, as one Jew to another, to please intervene on my behalf, to work with the Mujahidin and to accept their demands, so that I can be released and returned to my family; see my wife, my children and grandchildren again. So, as one Jew to another, I beg you to please accept the demands of the Mujahidin and to obtain my freedom.

The demands by Al Qaeda seem to be:

Zawahiri implies Weinstein is not to be freed "until the Crusaders release our captives" including Omar Abdel Rahman and Aafia Siddiqui according to a translation by the SITE Monitoring Service...Last year Zawahiri issued a far longer list of demands, including Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an end to U.S. military bombings abroad.

Since most of the demands are for the US, why is Al Qaeda having Weinstein ask for Israeli help?

Are they trying to dare Israel to mount a rescue operation? Do they think Israel can influence the US to release terrorists in order to save Weinstein? Is this just a pathetic attempt by a fading Al Qaeda to appear relevant and stay in the news? Or do they want to taunt Israel in the future by saying "we can kidnap Jews and there is nothing you can do about it"?

It is good to see that Weinstein appears healthy, but this video release is very bizarre.

Round-up on "Sam Bacile" and the misdirection of the "Mohammed" movie

Here's a brief chronology on how the story about "Sam Bacile," the man whose film was blamed for sparking the deadly riots in Egypt and Libya that killed US diplomats, fell apart yesterday:

Jeffrey Goldberg:

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.

NYT:

The history of the film — who financed it; how it was made; and perhaps most important, how it was translated into Arabic and posted on YouTube to Muslim viewers — was shrouded Wednesday in tales of a secret Hollywood screening; a director who may or may not exist, and used a false name if he did; and actors who appeared, thanks to computer technology, to be traipsing through Middle Eastern cities. One of its main producers, Steve Klein, a Vietnam veteran whose son was severely wounded in Iraq, is notorious across California for his involvement with anti-Muslim actions, from the courts to schoolyards to a weekly show broadcast on Christian radio in the Middle East.

Tablet: The Truth About Mohammed Movie

AP finds the likely real "Sam Bacile":

The provocative anti-Muslim film implicated in mob protests in Egypt and Libya received logistical help from a man once convicted of financial crimes and featured actors who complained that their inflammatory dialogue was dubbed in after filming.
The self-proclaimed director of "Innocence of Muslims" initially claimed a Jewish and Israeli background and said he had gone into hiding because of the international controversy set off by the movie. But by day's end Wednesday, others involved in the film said his statements about his background were contrived, and evidence mounted that the film's key player was a southern Californian Coptic Christian with a checkered past.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he managed logistics for the company that produced "Innocence of Muslims," which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad and may have inflamed mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya.

Nakoula denied he had directed the film, though he said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam Bacile. But the cellphone number that the AP contacted Tuesday to reach the filmmaker who identified himself as Bacile traced to the same address near Los Angeles where Nakoula was located.

Nakoula told the AP he is a Coptic Christian and supported the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims.

The film was implicated in protests that resulted in the burning of the U.S. consulate Tuesday in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Libyan officials said Wednesday that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy employees were killed during the mob violence, but U.S. officials now say they are investigating whether the assault was a planned terrorist strike linked to Tuesday's 11-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Nakoula denied he had posed as Sam Bacile. Federal court papers filed in a 2010 criminal prosecution against him said Nakoula had used numerous aliases in the past. Among the fake names, the documents said, were Nicola Bacily and Erwin Salameh.
During a conversation outside his home, Nakoula 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 that middle name as well as 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 populace has long decried what they describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the country's Arab majority.

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.

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."

American actors and actresses who appeared in "Innocence of Muslims" issued a joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled about the project and alleged that some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed during post-production.

In the English-language version of the trailer, direct references to Muhammad appear to be the result of post-production changes to the movie. Either actors aren't seen when the name "Muhammad" is spoken in the overdubbed sound, or they appear to be mouthing something else as the name of the prophet is spoken.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," said the statement, obtained by the Los Angeles Times. "We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred."

In the end, it was not this bizarre bigoted movie that started the protests, but they were well-planned in advance:

A pro-al Qaeda group responsible for a previous armed assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is the chief suspect in Tuesday's attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, sources tracking militant Islamist groups in eastern Libya say.

They also note that the attack immediately followed a call from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for revenge for the death in June of a senior Libyan member of the terror group Abu Yahya al-Libi.

The group suspected to be behind the assault -- the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades -- first surfaced in May when it claimed responsibility for an attack on the International Red Cross office in Benghazi. The following month the group claimed responsibility for detonating an explosive device outside the U.S. Consulate and later released a video of that attack.

Noman Benotman, once a leading member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and now based at the Quilliam Foundation in London told CNN, "An attack like this would likely have required preparation. This would not seem to be merely a protest which escalated."

"According to our sources, the attack was the work of roughly 20 militants, prepared for a military assault; it is rare that an RPG7 is present at a peaceful protest," Benotman said.

"According to our sources, the attack against the consulate had two waves. The first attack led to U.S. officials being evacuated from the consulate by Libyan security forces, only for the second wave to be launched against U.S. officials after they were kept in a secure location."

EoZ Interview with Danny Danon

Tonight I had the opportunity to interview Danny Danon, deputy speaker of Knesset, who is publicizing his new book called Israel: the Will to Prevail.

Danon is a very right-wing Likud politician who is against a two-state solution.

While he is clearly a politician and answered many of my questions with well-rehearsed sound bites, he gave some interesting answers when I pushed. I don't think I pushed enough on some questions, but there were time constraints, after all.

In the first part he speaks about the Iranian threat and what Israel could do, his opinions of Obama and Romney and more.

In the second part, Danon talks about and defends his "three state solution", he discusses the Levy Report and the threat of labeling goods made in Judea and Samaria.

Jordan's king says Israel frustrates his nuclear ambitions

From AFP:

King Abdullah II on Wednesday accused Israel of disrupting Jordan's nuclear programme which is aimed at meeting its dire energy needs and powering water desalination plants, in an exclusive interview with AFP.

"Strong opposition to Jordan's nuclear energy programme is coming from Israel," the king said.

"When we started going down the road of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, we approached some highly responsible countries to work with us. And pretty soon we realised that Israel was putting pressure on those countries to disrupt any cooperation with us."

Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

"A Jordanian delegation would approach a potential partner, and one week later an Israeli delegation would be there, asking our interlocutors not to support Jordan's nuclear energy bid," Abdullah said during the interview at his palace.

Jordan, which imports 95 percent of its energy needs, is struggling to find alternatives to unstable Egyptian gas supplies, which normally cover 80 percent of the kingdom's power production.

Since 2011, the pipeline supplying gas from Egypt to both Israel and Jordan has been attacked 14 times, with a consequent disruption of supplies.

With desert covering 92 percent of its territory, the kingdom is one of the world's 10 driest countries and wants to use atomic energy to fire desalination plants to overcome its crippling water shortage.

"Nuclear energy will be the cheapest reliable way to desalinate water," the king said.

I don't think that Abdullah actively seeks a nuclear weapon, but the idea that a nuclear power plant would be used exclusively for desalination seems strange. While Japan and Russia do have nuclear desalination plants, as far as I know, the largest existing desalination plants are not nuclear-powered.

But even if we take the Abdullah at his word, there is no doubt that he wants to position himself properly in case there is a nuclear arms race in the Middle East because of Iran's ambitions to build a bomb.

And given that Jordan is one bullet away from becoming a hostile Islamist state, Israel's concerns over its generally reliable neighbor seem well-placed.

(h/t Yoel)

PA TV censors critics of Abbas in live broadcast

From Palestinian Media Watch:

During a live broadcast, Palestinian Authority TV chose to censor PA citizens several times when they openly criticized the PA leadership. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that PA TV is directly controlled by Chairman Abbas' office and serves as a mouthpiece for the government.

A PA TV talk show invited Palestinians to speak during a live broadcast from Tulkarem, but when they criticized Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Fayyad and PA government ministers, the government-controlled TV station decided to silence the protests by muting the sound

Here's the best part:

Host: "The Jews have failed too."
Razi: "Whenever prices go up, you say: 'The Jews.'"

Funny - that's exactly what Amira Hass of Ha'aretz did!

Israel issues another 5000 work permits for PalArabs

Firas Press quotes Israel radio as saying that Israel approved an additional 5000 work permits for Palestinian Arabs to work in Israel and in settlements.

This is in addition to 5000 permits approved in July.

According to a report last month, some 41,000 Palestinian Arabs have work permits in Israel and nearly that same amount go to work without the permits. 15,000 of them work in Jewish settlements.

It appears that this initiative is meant to help stabilize the PA economy in the face of the economic protests that have been rocking the sector, along with the $57 million in tax revenues advanced to the PA this month ahead of schedule.

Wednesday links

From Ian:

Help! Israel Is Trying to Defend Itself

"As far as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are concerned, it all started when Israel fired back. And they want the rest of the world to adopt this line. Sadly, there is no shortage of naïve people in the West who share this argument. These terrorists are causing more harm to the Palestinians than anyone else. But the two parties would like to see the terror attacks continue so that they can have an excuse to denounce Israel whenever the IDF fires back."

Terrorism and Palestinian Statehood by Alan Dershowitz

"In 1968, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, educated to hate anything associated with Jews or Israel, assassinated New York Sen. and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. Five years later, Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat arranged to have three American diplomats kidnapped and offered in exchange for Kennedy’s assassin. When the U.S. refused to release Sirhan, Arafat personally ordered the torture and murder of the Americans.Rather than condemn this pervasive violence, the U.N. has done everything in its power to reward it, including devoting special agencies entirely to Palestinians and their cause. Meanwhile, the U.N. and the international community have given the cold shoulder to Tibetans, Kurds and other stateless groups that have not used terrorism as their primary means of achieving recognition and statehood."

U.S. has no right to block Israel on Iran: Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said the United States had forfeited its moral right to stop Israel taking action against Iran's nuclear program because it had refused to be firm with Tehran itself.

White House Rejects Netanyahu’s Request for Meeting on U.S. Trip

Canadians in Iran faced ‘very real’ threat, officials warn

"In 2009, said Michel de Salaberry, a former Canadian ambassador who returned as chargé d’affaires that year, the mission and its personnel came under “credible threats” from the Revolutionary Guards’ volunteer militia force known as the basij. The threats came following an interview Mr. Harper gave the Wall Street Journal in which he described the Iranian regime as “evil.” The incident showed how quickly real threats can arise, Mr. de Salaberry said."

Breaking what silence?

"In exploiting the allegations of human rights violations for political propaganda, groups such as BtS and their funders are not in any way contributing to the moral imperative of preventing such abuses.
Rather, they themselves engage in conduct that is immoral and fail to fulfill the humanitarian mandate that they espouse."

Co-founder of Breaking the Silence speaks at Australians for Palestine event

Terrorist Who Killed Americans One Month Before 9/11 Not Sought by U.S. After 2011 Release

"Ahlam Tamimi has become more than just one Palestinian terrorist with blood on her hands. She is now a symbol of how weak the United States is, how unserious we are about continuing the conflicts formerly labeled the “War on Terror.” The longer her crimes go unpunished, the more dangerous she becomes as that symbol.
If she escapes justice completely, it will inevitably lead to more dead Americans."

Fate Sealed for Egypt’s Jews

Islamists storm the U.S. embassy and Egypt’s last Jews have no rabbi. Shanah tova from the Muslim Brotherhood.

MEMRI: Egyptian Salafis Demand Release of Omar Abd Al-Rahman (The Blind Sheikh), Chant Antisemitic Slogans

Channel 4 cancels controversial screening of Islam: The Untold Story documentary after presenter Tom Holland is threatened

"A Channel 4 spokeswoman said: “Having taken security advice, we have reluctantly cancelled a planned screening of the programme Islam: The Untold Story. We remain extremely proud of the film which is still available to view on 4oD.”"

Russian ships displayed at DNC tribute to vets

"On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.
But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships."

Samsung comes out of the ‘Israel closet’

Israeli R&D centers — Samsung’s only such centers outside of South Korea — responsible for newest smartphone’s camera technology
"Yet another major multinational technology company has “come out” about its Israel connection. Korean tech giant Samsung, it turns out, has two major R&D facilities in Israel, and the local engineering staff was largely responsible for a number of Samsung technologies – including a sensor used in the upcoming Galaxy S3 smart camera and cellphone."

Those Zionists are diverting rain-clouds away from Iran!

Insidious!

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused his country’s enemies of enacting a sinister plan to create a drought by somehow destroying the rain clouds before they reach Iran, several Iranian websites reported on Tuesday.

Well-known for his anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric, Ahmadinejad has made similar remarks before and last year accused the West of devising a plot to cause drought in the Islamic republic.

“The enemy destroys the clouds that are headed towards our country and this is a war Iran will win,” Ahmadinejad said on Monday, according to several websites including the BBC’s Persian-language site and www.snn.ir.

Iran has one of the world’s driest climates and officials have warned that a severe lack of rainfall in parts of the country has created drought-like conditions.

I found the top secret blueprints for this nefarious plot by hacking into the Mossad:

Good thing I am not subject to Israeli censorship laws.

(h/t Ian)

Last year, for the first time in decades, Egypt refused to sell palm fronds to Israel for the holiday of Sukkot.

In previous years, Israeli Jews would purchase as many as 600,000 of these traditional lulavim. But last year, in what was hailed as a wonderful example of Egyptian "defiance," the state banned all exports of the lulavim using an excuse of tree diseases.

This year, there are reports that Egypt is continuing their ban on lulav exports. The official excuse this year is that the security crackdown in the Sinai is making it difficult to do the harvest.

Last year, after Egypt's rebuff, Israel tried to import the lulavim from Gaza but Hamas refused as well, causing Gaza farmers to lose an estimated one million dollars. UNRWA's spokesman, instead of slamming Hamas for refusing to help its people, instead blamed Israel for hypocrisy in seeking to import goods from Gaza.

Jordanian newspaper calls for genocide of "innately corrupt" Jews

Here is some incitement to genocide along with classic Arab anti-semitismin Assabeel, a Jordanian media outlet that seems to have a Palestinian Jordanian audience.

Entitled "Innate corruption of the Jews," it is a rambling essay that starts off with anti-Jewish verses in the Koran and then goes through the Jews' corrupt history of assassinating prophets. The article goes on to say that Jews only believe in war,and have mastered the art of "crushing and displacement and corruption." According to the article, Jewish philosophy is an intellectual-based corruption meant to push immorality, crime, economic ruin and control of the media.

"Perhaps the first corrupt component in the logic of Jewish thinking is based on disregard for God, of all creeds and religions, with its diligent attempts to falsify facts and history," the newspaper says. It goes on to charge, as Islam claims, that the Torah is falsified and distorted so that the Jews would not listen to the wonderful message of Islam.

Today, Jews have manipulated the US into fabricating Islam to be the number one threat to humanity. They even fabricated the Holocaust in order to make the world feel guilty. In fact, the article claims, Jews were the power behind Hitler's rise.

Now, all of the wars in "Islamic Somalia, Sudan, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine" come because of Jewish/"Zionist" inciting against Islam and Muslims. America has become the Zionist colony par excellence, fabricating wars only to benefit the Jews and the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel.

This is only a small part of the article, which meanders back to Joshua and from there to Deir Yassin (grossly exaggerated, naturally), then to Jewish control of Europe and of Christianity.

It concludes that the only way is to kill the Jews.

This innate intellectual corruption is systematic and based in the depths of vision of the Streptococcus of Zionism and modern Zionist Christianity makes us decide that the venomous Jewish snake can only be dealt with by cutting off her head...as Allah warned us to fight corruption by fighting in the way of Allah as Jihad is the pinnacle of Islam.

This is followed by a litany of verses about the glories of fighting for the sake of Allah.

At my request, JWines.com set up two pages - one with wines that are from grapes grown in Judea and Samaria, and one with those grown in the Golan Heights.

In addition, the Barkan winery is also in Judea and Samaria, even if its grapes are not grown there.

At a time when products made by Jews, and only Jews, in the Land of Israel are being boycotted, buying these award-winning wines becomes more than just a good idea for your enjoyment.

Egyptian perverts wait outside girls' schools to expose themselves

We've discussed Egypt's rampant sexual harassment many times before, but things are even sicker than has been reported:

As the new school year begins next week in Egypt, school girls and their families are preparing to face yet another year of sexual harassment, this time waiting for the children outside their schools.

Egyptian mothers worry about their young daughters, who are subjected to sexual harassment outside their gated schools and daughters only pray to go home safely after the day has ended.

The phenomena of men waiting outside girls only schools to sneak a view, harass and self-expose themselves has made even school a difficult trip to take on a daily basis. Egyptian girls must join girls-only schools after elementary school in all public education, which has turned the gates of the schools into a pervert magnet.

I went to the Kolyet al-Banat school in Zamalek, an all-girls school from elementary through high school:

Right around the corner from our school is an all boys school similar in age group to ours, so we knew what was out there waiting for us every day after school. But it wasn’t exclusive to naughty school boy behavior, we had adult men who also used to wait for the final bell to ring and the thousands of girls to come out. We had a guy who looked like a father of any one of us, a lawyer or a businessman carrying a briefcase, who used to stand there outside of our school every single day. Once the girls started to leave the school he would swiftly move his briefcase, exposing his penis to us. As children we would run away, some laughing and some crying. But he wasn’t the only one. A building guard, or bowab as they are called in Egypt, who worked in a nearby building, a 60-something old man who wore the traditional male dress and sat on his bench watching the street. Once we passed by him, he would lift up his dress and expose his naked flesh to us. We stopped walking by that building and warned other girls as well.

When the problem became overwhelming and parents started to complain to the school and the police, the authorities and the Qasr al-Nil police station sent a police car that stood there outside of our school everyday during my senior year. Problems were getting out of hand and leaving the school meant being exposed to the worst of human nature. That was in late 1999, but the problem has not improved, not even slightly, since. In fact it became widespread to the point where mothers are hiding horror stories of what happens to their girls in school, fearing the father would prevent them from having an education.

...Sexual harassment is no stranger to the experience of being a female in Egypt; in fact it became a fundamental element of being outdoors. Last week, the National Council for Women (NCW) said that Egyptian women get harassed 7 times every 200 meters, and a 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for Women Rights found that well over two-thirds of Egyptian women are harassed on daily basis. Even activists who protest the grotesque practice are also harassed, defying logic.

It is a lot easier to get a protest in Egypt to protect Mohammed's "honor" then to protect the honor of everyone's sisters and daughters.

(h/t Yoel)

Rosh Hashanah video from Latma

(h/t Andreas, Cheryl)

Horrific tale of anti-semitism at British state school

From a pseudonymous author at TheJC:

As a trainee teacher in an inner-London school in the last two years, I dealt with countless remarks about my religion, ranging from the perplexing to the deeply offensive. After his students drew swastikas all over his classroom, my supervisor said simply: "It's not our job to project our own moral compass on to the students." Had I been any other ethnicity experiencing something similar there would doubtless have been instant outrage and punishment. Sadly, by this point I was used to this kind of reaction.

It began when, mystifyingly, a colleague told students about my religion, and the reasons for my so-called "persistent" absences (for the chagim). Later, other colleagues openly discussed my beliefs with students, without my consent or knowledge. Some were interested, but other pupils subjected me to inappropriate and insulting questions, chants and disruptions. Needless to say, had I wanted to share my private religious beliefs, I would only have done so on my own terms.

I found myself the constant prey of a group of roaming lower schoolers who would verbally abuse me everywhere and anywhere - including in my classroom - with screams of "Hitler! Hitler!" Amazingly, each time I reported an incident, it was ignored. Knowing there would be no consequences, no discipline imposed on them, only encouraged the group. Later, someone scratched "Kill Jews" on to a computer in my classroom. The school got rid of the evidence only after I involved the police.

I could detect no racism towards the other, ethnically diverse staff members. Minor incidents of racist name-calling between students were always swiftly punished. Why were the endless attacks on me ignored?

To my mind, the reason was the undisguised and relentless antisemitism of a number of staff members. Some colleagues concocted tenuous issues relating to my beliefs, others were deliberately and inexplicably provocative, calling me "Christ-killer" and other names.

It gets worse from there.

I am told that this happened a year ago; the teacher got herself transferred to another school and did not want to make this a big issue at the time. This seems to be anomalous, from what I gather, although there are lesser amounts of anti-semitism - often disguised as "pro-Palestinian" - at other schools.

Egyptians torch US embassy flag over film that alleges Mohammed was gay (updated)

From Al Ahram:

Egyptian protesters on Tuesday took down the American flag from the walls of the US embassy in Cairo during a thousands-strong demonstration held to protest a short film produced by US based Coptic-Christians that critics say demeans Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

A number of protesters managed to climb atop the walls surrounding the embassy, while others were able to breach the embassy's garden, where they removed an American flag and replaced it with another one bearing the Islamic declaration of faith: "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah."

The Ultras White Knights – hardcore football fans – claimed that members of their group had brought down the US flag. While group members have since retreated from the scene, they say they are planning additional rallies to protest the film.

Many of the more Islamist-leaning protesters had answered calls by Salafist leader Wesam Abdel-Wareth – who is also the president of Egypt's ultra-conservative Hekma television channel – to protest the film 'Mohammed's trial' at 5pm outside the US embassy in Cairo's Garden City district.

Abdel-Wareth, for his part, denied that protesters had managed to breach embassy premises, claiming that the American flag had been torched in front – rather than inside – embassy grounds.

The El-Hekma channel's official Facebook page, meanwhile, has posted a photo of a group of young men removing the flag outside the embassy with a comment that reads: "Ultras Zamalek tear the American flag in front of the embassy."

US embassy spokesman David Linfield, for his part, confirmed that protesters had been able to enter the embassy and remove the flag. He went on to deny rumours, however, that shots had been fired at demonstrators or that anyone had been injured or killed.

Protesters carried signs condemning the alleged insults to Prophet Mohammed, while others vowed vengeance. Some protesters demanded the embassy's closure.

"Obama, Obama there are still a billion Osamas," they chanted in reference to slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

Other protesters wrote "There is no God but Allah and Mohamed is the Prophet of Allah" on the embassy's main gate, obscuring the sign reading "Embassy of the United States."

"Everyone is here for the Prophet," said protester Osama Abdel-Halim. "Why is it that, in politics, everyone takes to the streets over things like the constitution, but not when the prophet is insulted?"

Protester Mostafa Khallef told Ahram Online: "President Morsi must take steps to prevent the broadcast of this offensive film."

I can't find details on the film yet, but here is what is being reported:

The controversial film is reportedly being produced by US-based Coptic-Christian Egyptians, including Esmat Zaklama and Maurice Sadeq.

Maurice Sadeq, a Coptic lawyer based in the US, announced earlier this week that the US-based 'High Authority of the Coptic State' would broadcast the 13-minute film on Tuesday to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington.

According to Egypt Independent, the film claims that Mohammed was gay.

UPDATE: YNet reports that the film - which looks spectacularly bad - was not done by Copts but by an Israeli in America and financed by anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones.

But later news on Wednesday indicates that the filmmaker, "Sam Bacile," is a pseudonym and it is unclear if he has in fact any Israeli or even Jewish connections as he has claimed.