September 13, 2012 | 8:13 pm

It’s Not About The Video

Posted by Ariel Blumenthal

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Benghazi

It’s not about the video.

Rest assured, actress who spoke this morning on the air in tears, shocked that she was part of a project that “brought the death of 4 people.” You didn’t do it.

If an idiotic video on YouTube is reason enough to kill 4 people and burn down the US Embassy, what kind of violence would the wealth of fresh hate, venom and incitement against Israel on the web amount to?

This is not about the video. By the time I’m writing these lines it’s clear that the attack in Benghazi was a premeditated operation by an Islamist militia. Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 operative living in Beirut said yesterday: “This was not at all surprising. The most extreme end of the Islamist spectrum is serving notice it is a force to be reckoned with.”

Last month a summer festival in Israel was targeted by Muslims because it took place in a lot adjacent to the yard of a museum that used to be a Mosque. We’ve seen a Mozart opera cancelled in Berlin, episodic television revised, cartoons, books, YouTube videos - all deemed offensive enough for mortal riots. Pre school with AK-47’s.

It’s becoming evident that more and more Muslims from Benghazi to Northeastern University are in the business of seeking grievances. The free world should now decide whether it is going to play along with it.

By including the disclaimer “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others” in his reaction to the attack, President Obama on Tuesday dragged us an inch deeper into the swampy discourse of getting-offended. No need to make the link from the highest podium in the land - It’s not about the video.

Kudos, on the other hand, to Google, owner of YouTube, who removed access to the video in religiously-testosteroned places like Egypt and Libya, but left it up for the general audience in observance of a thing called free speech. It’s now reported though, that Google’s non-hysterical attitude is challenged by a hysterical White House: The administration has officially asked Google to remove the video.

The protection of free speech covers most kinds of expressions - tasteless, pathetic and amateur included; The White House should now decide whether talking about Islam remains protected, or whether we are going to be bullied into submitting to blasphemy laws, which create injustice and misery in many Muslim countries (And are now being pushed at the UN as a universal ban.)

Secretary Clinton included a different disclaimer in her statement: “This was an attack by a small and savage group – not the people or Government of Libya.” This is an odd choice: As it is, America’s allies in the Muslim world are not always able or quick to act against the Islamists in their midst; Under these circumstances, wouldn’t it be smarter not to grant the Libyan government such a broad exemption from responsibility?

It’s not Clinton’s role to minimize the severity of the attack. Why did she find it necessary to provide this clarification in the first place? Did she fear a terrible Islamophobic wave hitting the US? Was she trying to avert an angry American mob from storming the Libyan Embassy?

Don’t worry, they won’t do that. For some reason only in the Muslim world do young and able men go on violent rampages because of a YouTube video - What an excuse! I hope my son’s teacher would know better if he ever shows this kind of audacity summoning excuses for doing stuff.

“How could this happen in a country we helped liberate?” Clinton asked, “In a city we helped save from destruction?”

I guess it’s an Arab Spring thing.

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