Where Did The Nakoula Video Come From and Where Did It Go?

Have you ever noticed that, after the Obama Administration blamed protests in Cairo and Benghazi on the Nakoula video, the video just vanished from the scene, no one ever spoke of it again, least of all angry Muslims?

It's almost as if the video never existed.

From Roger Simon:

But the most extraordinary aspect of the talking points editing process is what was never mentioned, at least as far I have seen — the supposedly infamous Mohammed video. Not a word of that. While emailing each other, these officials from the CIA, State, the Pentagon, and the White House seem to have completely ignored it. 

In other words, like the lady in the classic Hitchcock movie, the video vanished. 

But if this mystery has a MacGuffin, it may be the provenance of that video Innocence of Muslims itself. Made in the California desert by a bizarre and hapless character named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, working under the nom d’auteur of Sam Bacile, it first surfaced on YouTube in July 2012 in English language form. (I viewed the video— a trailer — and, like others, found it to be unwatchable amateurish junk.) 

In September 2012 it, was translated into Arabic. Wikipedia does not provide the precise date or the identity of the translator. These would be interesting to know, obviously. The film apparently played in its full form in June as well, at the Vine Theater on Hollywood Boulevard,reportedly to an empty house.In other words, hardly anyone saw this film, except for the trailer, yet it was blamed for demonstrations and burning in Cairo and all the carnage in Benghazi. 

It would be interesting to know who promoted this idea and why — also when exactly that started. Raymond Ibrahim, in PJ Media, reported on September 10, 2012, that the Egyptian newspaper El Fagr wrote of imminent demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Cairo with the goal of winning freedom for World Trade Center terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and others of his ilk. 

This is a vastly more logical motivation for a demonstration, especially on September 11. 

And who was Nakoula, a Coptic Christian immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt, in all of this? When he, as Sam Bacile, first took credit for the video, he identified himself to both the AP and the Wall Street Journal as an Israeli Jew with “100 Jewish donors” backing a putatively five million dollar film (that looks as if it could have been made for the cost of gas to his Mojave desert location).Come se dice? 

That weird notion disappeared quickly, but where did it come from? Who really is Nakoula Nakoula anyway, other than another deadbeat scalawag with a trail of six-figure unpaid bills? And why would an Egyptian Copt identify himself as an Israeli, of all things? 

I don’t know. He’s in jail. Maybe someone should go ask him. 

Meanwhile, pace Hitchcock, I think I’m going to go write The Video Vanishes. Or maybe Victor Victoria — in honor of the two Victorias, Nuland and Toensing.