Filmmaker Sam Bacile behind anti-Mohammed propaganda 'Innocence of Muslims' is not Israeli

The Islam-bashing movie maker is no Israeli. And he’s going under a fake name.

Sam Bacile, whose crude depiction of the Prophet Muhammed led to the deaths of four Americans at the hands of Libyan mob, is not a citizen of the Jewish state, may not even be a Jew, and is using a pseudonym.

Bacile has identified himself as Jewish and Israeli in interviews, but Israeli diplomats said they have no record of any citizen with that name, the Associated Press reported.

“His name is a pseudonym,” confirmed Steve Klein, a Christian activist who says he was consultant on the film.

“All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms,” he told The Atlantic. “I doubt he's Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign."

So who is Bacile? Klein claims to not know. But he insisted that everybody involved in the controversial film “Innocence of Muslims” was “an active American citizen.”

“They're from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, they're some that are from Egypt,” he said. “Some are Copts (Coptic Christians), but the vast majority are Evangelical.”

Coptic Christians endured centuries of discrimination at the hands of the Muslim majority in Egypt, getting worse after the country’s monarchy fell in 1952.

Klein told the AP he expected the movie would rile up Muslims. “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen,” he said.

Klein said he also warned Bacile that he could be “the next Theo van Gogh,” referring to the Dutch filmmaker who was killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

By any name, Bacile went into hiding after telling reporters he was a 56-year-old real estate developer from California — and after defending his flick as a “political movie.”

“Islam is a cancer, period,” Bacile told the AP. “The U.S. lost a lof money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re fighting with ideas.”

Among the “ideas” Bacile promotes is that Muhammad is a philandering fraud who talks to donkeys and sanctions rape and child sexual abuse.

Bacile said he was outraged by the deaths of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, but insisted he had no blood on his hands.

“I feel the security system (at the embassies) is no good,” he said. “America should do something to change it.”

Bacile wrote and directed the $5 million movie, which he said was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors. He did not identify any of them. He also would not confirm Klein’s claim that he had relatives in Egypt who now fear for their lives.

Records show no evidence of Bacile residing in the Golden State or having a real estate license. And while he says his movie had a screening in Hollywood last year, it’s not listed on IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Database, and features no stars.

In fact, the 13-minute trailer appears to have a cast of amateurs — some wearing fake beards — who spout wooden dialogue against phony backdrops.

That trailer was posted on YouTube in July and was promoted by Koran-burning Florida preacher Terry Jones and a Muslim-hating Coptic Christian activist named Morris Sadik.

Dubbed into Arabic, the trailer then sparked the outbreak of deadly violence that erupted in Libya — and in Egypt as well — on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Google has now blocked Egyptians from accessing the video.