Orly Taitz: Obama policies are 'clear and present danger to Israel'

The driving force behind the 'birther' movement has found her star is rising in Israel.

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"U.S. President Barack Obama's domestic and foreign policies pose "a clear and present danger to Israel," says the driving force behind the campaign to prove Obama was not born in the United States and therefore ineligible to serve as president.

The so-called "birther" movement that alleges that Obama was born in Kenya found fertile ground for publicity during the perennially slow news days of late July and early August. As cable and online news outlets devoted more and more time to the phenomenon, Israeli-American activist Orly Taitz emerged at the forefront of the campaign, and her star steadily rose until a fateful MSNBC interview in which she referred to her detractors as "Obama's brownshirts."

Last month, state officials in Hawaii said they have once again checked and confirmed that Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.

Speaking to Haaretz on Monday, Taitz slammed what she calls Obama's support for Hamas, citing an executive order signed by the U.S. president shortly after taking office, which funneled $900 million to the Gaza Strip. To Taitz, the executive order was a form of political subterfuge meant to prop up the enemies of the United States and Israel, in spite of widespread American Jewish support for the new president.

"During the campaign, Obama was telling American Jews that he is for Israel... but sure enough, just as he was elected, look at his first actions, he issued an executive order to give $900 million to Gaza with no preconditions."

Taitz says that the money given to Hamas, which "has declared war on Israel and the United States," will not be used to help the people of the Gaza Strip but rather to build Qassam rockets, posing a serious threat to the State of Israel.

She believes Obama poses a threat to Israel not only because of his support of radical Islamic groups such as Hamas, but also because of his "radical socialist" policies, that will bring the United States to "totalitarianism and Stalinism." According to Taitz, these policies "pose a threat to all democracies, not only Israel."

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Will Israel ask our permission to attack us?

I mean, even assuming it was true, or that Orly Taitz is anybody's authority on anything, much less the relation between the Obama administration and Israel.

:eyes:

Why should we take her seriously on anything whatsoever?

'She believes Obama poses a threat to Israel not only because of his support of radical Islamic groups such as Hamas, but also because of his "radical socialist" policies, that will bring the United States to "totalitarianism and Stalinism."'

Just wow. This is not something one can argue with. It's just... wow. Obama's policies are not radical socialism; they are what would be taken for granted by most mainstream Europaean parties, including conservative ones. But - oh never mind, how can you argue with insanity?

The ironic thing is that she is giving aid and comfort to the very sort of xenophobic paranoia in which antisemitism invariably flourishes.

Wing nuts can grow just about anywhere. They come in all sizes and flavors. Responsible people on both sides of the political divide refuse to take them seriously.

we're supposed to pay attention to her?

I think that one of the reasons that the birthers are getting press is that it's a convenient way to tar conservatives as wing nuts. In fact, responsible conservatives have disavowed the ideas of the Birthers.

That limits "responsible" to at most 42% of their party.

Now, I'm not convinced that even that high a fraction of conservatives qualify as "responsible", but certainly one thing birthers are *not* is a small or unrepresentative fringe of the American conservative movement.

I got it from wikipedia, to be honest, but http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3995096&mesg_id=3995096 links to a poll giving the same numbers.

That said, by now, they'll probably have changed a bit, but I don't know in which direction.