Why is Orly Taitz in Israel Two Days After Submitting a Forged Obama Birth Certificate to a US Federal Court?
Is it because she is fleeing prosecution for knowingly submitting a forged document to a federal court? Is it because she is secretly an Israeli agent working to undermine Barack Obama? Is it because she fears that black men in suits and sunglasses are coming from Washington to kill her?
I don't know the answer, but "birther queen" Orly Taitz was indeed interviewed by MSNBC from Tel Aviv on Aug. 3 - only two days after submitting, to a federal district court in California for "authentication," a document alleged to be Obama's Kenyan birth certificate now pretty conclusively proven to be a forgery. Following her gleeful release of the document on Aug. 1, Taitz must be a little surprised by the speed at which it has been picked apart on the internet and shown to be an almost certain forgery. I don't know what the penalty might be if it is determined that Taitz knowingly submitted a forged document to a federal court for the sole purpose of doing political harm to the President of the United States, but it is the one good reason I can think of why she would so suddenly leave the country at what only two days ago seemed (at least to her and her demented followers) to be her moment of triumph. While she may indeed fear that black Men in Black are coming to kill her, I would seriously question the theory some have suggested that she might be an Israeli agent working to undermine Obama, if only because I assume the Israelis would be smarter than to entrust such a task to such an obvious nutjob as Orly Taitz.
Taitz appears haggard and even more disturbed than usual in her MSNBC interview with David Schuster, who charged in a question at the end of the interview that Taitz refused a ride to MSNBC's affiliate in Tel Aviv the same day because the driver appeared to be a Muslim. A Soviet-born holder of dual US/Israeli citizenship, Taitz is on record with the Orange County Register stating that Israel should not merely defeat but "exterminate" its Arab enemies, whatever "collateral damage" may occur among innocent Arab civilians (see also Tablet). Having wondered previously why an immigrant from the former Soviet Union would be as obsessed with Obama's birth certificate as any down-home American redneck, I'm beginning to to think it might just be a case of Transatlantic Islamophobia.
Orly Taitz claims that she is merely a "lawyer," with a purely "legal" interest in the details of Obama's birth, but I obviously suspect there's more to her Obama birth obsession than this or mere insanity. Taitz hails from a milieu of Soviet-born Israelis among whom far-right, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment runs much stronger by most accounts than among the general Israeli population, as numerous Israeli and international sources have observed. Witness the rise of Avigdor Lieberman, Soviet-born leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, made up mostly of other Soviet-born Israelis with strongly anti-Arab views, many of whom live not in Israel itself but in West Bank settlements; and many of whom really, really don't like Barack Hussein Obama.
Taitz has a documented association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby group with close ties to Binyamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, as Allison Hoffman notes in Tablet. I'd be very interested in hearing what sympathies Taitz may have not just for Likud but for Yisrael Beiteinu, and what connections she may have with Soviet-born settlers in the West Bank. As observed above, she is on record saying that Israel's Arab enemies should be "exterminated" rather than merely defeated, and appears to have refused a ride to MSNBC's affiliate in Tel Aviv because she believed the driver to be a Muslim. Like right-wing settlers (see video), Taitz is also fond of calling her critics "nazis" or "brownshirts," as she did with David Schuster in her interview from Tel Aviv. Taitz spoke about her birther activities in a March 1 interview with Israeli National Radio.Could this be why she has found so much in common with Islamophobic American rednecks who think that Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya? Could it also be that America's best interests are not those she has most at heart in her dogged efforts to undermine our president?
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
I think it is pretty apparent to any sensible observer that "Doctor" Taitz is crazy. Not just a little crazy, but waaaaaaaay crazy.
I saw the interview of her with David Shuster. Totally nuts. Completely wacko.
August 4, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Shuster and Cameron, Tamaron (?) should have let her speak. They interrupted constantly, and it helped her "meltdown" a bit, but it would have been more instructive to hear her whacky reasoning. Her own explanation would have hung her, not simply bringing up Anne Coulter, et.al.
Instead, she started her narrative over each time she had a chance to speak, and we never got to discover her reasoning, and now we can only guess about the extent of the flaws in her argument. Then if Shuster wanted to refute different points, he could have. It was not a good interview; Rachel Maddow could have done it far better.
August 4, 2009 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wendy, they did interrupt Orly several times but she did not answer their questions. It looked to me like she intentionally started her narrative over and over again instead of answering the questions. Did she go to law school? What I saw reminded me of any lawyers confuse and stall act with a large dose of wacky acky just to add to the general atmosphere. I know she has at least a few screws loose for believing the birther junk, but her act was a lot like Palin's' - blame the media for everything hoping they will defend themselves instead of pursuing the real issue. I thought the whole bit was entertainment all around and had nothing to do with actual, factual news and those reporters knew it. But what else do we expect from MSM?
August 4, 2009 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed on the info-tainment; I just wanted to hear what she might have said...to watch her hoist herself on her on petard, as it were...ahr, matey!
I keep wondering if MSNBC claims to be news, or just partisan punditry? The new Ed Show; he may be a good man, but he just ain't too smart...but then, he is a l;oyalist; maybe that's all it takes. But I wish there were a higher standard for lefties. We have no cable, so I never saw these programs before we got high-speed internet. The Sunday talking heads have deteriorated into ratings-blather--just look at the guests! I swear, I hear more intelligent questions from Chris Wallace sometimes. Gadzukes!
August 4, 2009 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
She was never going to answer the questions; I agree with bluesplashy, she was simply ducking the questions and stalling for time. Every time the hosts tried to bring her back to the point, she went nuts and started screaming about being censored. I'm assuming the same happened with the CNN interview she referred to at the beginning of the segment. In the end, the only way to get her away from the insane rants is to cut off the microphone.
August 4, 2009 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shuster ripping her for not wanting to take the car over to the studio because the guy appeared to be a muslim was absolutely priceless.
August 4, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Why is Orly Taitz in Israel Two Days After Submitting a Forged Obama Birth Certificate to a US Federal Court?"
Maybe she was deported...let us pray.
August 4, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israel has a very fairly stringent rule about not extraditing citizens for crimes committed in other countries. Maybe she realized she was going to get slammed for filing a forged document and she skipped to where she thought the US couldn't touch her.
August 4, 2009 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait, I've got it. She's gone to Israel to seek mental health help because as a Israeli citizen she has access to free care.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Israel
August 4, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
ROFL on that one.
August 4, 2009 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait, she's an Israeli? How is a foreign national permitted to question the legitimacy of an American President? Can't she be barred from entering the U.S. as a foreign subversive, sort of the way the U.K. did with Michael Savage?
August 4, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
OMGWTFBBQ
Awesome. My hat goes off to you, sir.
August 4, 2009 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gee, I handn't considered that she might be an Israeli agent. I just assumed she was KGB.
August 4, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I doubt she's an Israeli agent. They would have picked someone far more polished than her, someone who would come across as credible and they would have given her a document that wasn't such an obvious forgery.
This chick is a half-wit who's more likely on the RNC's payroll than the Israeli government's. This is more along the lines of something that Michael Steele would do and he'd then think he was brilliant for having planned it himself!!
August 4, 2009 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Orly Taintz = Leader of the Republican Party.
August 4, 2009 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oily Taste
August 4, 2009 7:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
new10: Good one! Did you see Olbermann call her Taintz yesterday on national TV? He was really enjoying himself... Haha...
August 5, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
She's on record for saying that Israel should not simply defeat but exterminate its enemies, regardless of collateral damage to innocent Arab civilians?
You know what I'd like the cable news networks to start employing on a regular basis.
The "in the interest of full disclosure" preface. Before they allow any politician or pundit or lawyer to speak on any subject, they need to open the discussion with "in the interest of full disclosure".
August 4, 2009 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
let me fill this thought out a little.
"In the interest of full disclosure, Orly Taitz believes that Israel should not just defeat Arabs, but exterminate all of them. Orly, thanks for being here, now what was it you wanted to say about Barack Obama's citizenship?"
"In the interest of full disclosure, John Boehner has said that he doesn't know anyone, not one doctor or one patient, that would support a public option. Senator, thanks for being on the show. Now about the AMA's endorsement of the House health care plan..."
"In the interest of full disclosure, Senator Kitt Bond believes the entire universe was created just 5000 years ago. He also believes that the U.S. has the best health care system in the world. Thanks for being here Senator."
August 4, 2009 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I don't know what the penalty might be if it is determined that Taitz knowingly submitted a forged document to a federal court"
It would be "fraud on the court," and would earn sanctions, at very least contempt.
August 4, 2009 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
It should be embarassing for MSNBC to give this woman any air time at all. She provided a clearly false document. She fled the country. Why would anyone care what her opinion about anything is? The only question I want her to answer is where did she get the document, from whom? Anything else is irrelevant.
August 4, 2009 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that it would have been a lot more productive if in the interview they had let her speak and not bullied her they way they did. (It truly embarrasses me to see adults engage in name calling like that, even worse to quote Ann Coulter over and over again instead of calling her a "kook" herself)
Her initial response really DID answer the question asked. And it really is a plausible point. What if: in an era of loser regulation, someone brought a newborn infant to the country and said it was born here? It really does make sense and explains the birth announcements in the papers. She never supposed any Manchurian conspiracy that involved doing it with the intention of him becoming president, just a mother taking advantage of the obvious convenience and advantage of having her son documented as American born.
She appears big time crazy, but her point in this interview is not that crazy.
So go ahead and fire away at me, but just don't let someone's mental illness keep you from listening to what she is saying. Also please note that I am speaking to the question of how could the Hawaiian birth certificate and birth announcements could alone not prove his birthplace.
August 4, 2009 5:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good grief. Yes her point is crazy.....and stupid and ridiculous.
So you think the state of Hawaii is just going to willy nilly grant a birth certificate to a newborn? How did she get the baby into the country? Do you think she snuck him in in her backpack? Do you think an 18 year old is going to fly to KENYA - away from her mom and everything she knows - to give birth to her first child? And even so, it doesn't matter....his MOTHER WAS A U.S. CITIZEN!
Then we're all screwed because that's what we ALL rely on.
August 4, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, stupid details.
In 1961 Kenya did not have major air service. Jets had just begun the Atlantic Run the previous year (Fall, 1960), and Jet service to Africa was still a few years off. African air services were all limited to prop planes, with service to a place such as Kenya perhaps two planes per week from the various European Capitals. Many African airfields were little more than packed dirt runways.
How do I know??? Well I was working at the time for the Experiment in International Living, a large student exchange organization, that got one of the first Peace Corps Training contracts just after JFK signed the legislation in August, 1961, and one part of my job was to arrange transportation for some of the many experts being sent out to evaluate potential Peace Corps projects. Kennedy wanted thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers in the field by year's end -- and he especially wanted PCV's on the ground in Kenya. So I do remember booking various development specialists through to review projects about 48 years ago this month. I wonder what ever happened to my "bible" of international air connections of that era? It would have been very difficult to book Kenya to Hawaii -- I think one would have needed to go prop to Europe, Jet to the US, cross country by prop, and then a jet to Hawaii.
Obama's Father came to the US in the first IIE (Institute of International Education) group from Africa, and the only way to move them to the US in fall, 1959, was by charter. IIE generally chartered DC3's (all that the African runways could accomodate) and brought their students to Europe, Paris or Amsterdam, and then put them on US commercial flights (Pan Am) to NYC. When we were sending Peace Corps out in 1961, we frequently had to depend on prop charters for the final leg of trips into Africa.
August 4, 2009 10:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
She said that both parents had to be US citizens for BO to qualify for the presidency.
Fortunately, if this is the best the Republicans can do, we really have no worries. People like this should be pitied, not hated.
August 4, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, exactly. She could have brought him in a backpack. And in 1959, I can imaging it was very easy to forge whatever you need to say a baby was born at home. And a nervous, lying mother would certainly place announcements in two papers, not just one. I think it is pointless to guess why his mother flew to Kenya at that time. The point is she could have, and if she had him there she would have plenty of reason and opportunity to make it look like he was born in Hawaii.
I don't get the point in emphasizing that his mother was a U.S. citizen. That is not at issue as far as I know.
We all know that it does not matter that his father was not American, but Orly is not speaking to us. By repeating it over and over she is definitely planting that seed in the same sort of people that already think BO is Muslim. Don't forget how large that group of people is. Maybe it does not matter that some of those who already thought he was Muslim now think he Constitutionally not qualified for President, but it can't be good.
August 4, 2009 10:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
But they're just fine with a war criminal as president. Amazing what people do in desperation.
August 4, 2009 11:13 PM | Reply | Permalink