A lot of “sophisticated” people are laughing at a group they call the “birthers” because these protesters seem so absurd as to be totally harmless. But I don’t get the joke. I suspect the movement might be driven by sinister forces that would subvert the American government in the interests of far-right Israeli policies.

For the benefit of anyone who has been on a mission to Mars for the past several weeks, the “birthers” are people who insist that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is not eligible to be President of the United States because the Constitution says only a “natural born citizen” can hold the job. Ignoring iron-clad documentation and declarations by Hawaiian officials, these “birthers” are showing up at political meetings to demand that the President produce his birth certificate.

I am not suggesting that the protesters themselves are enemy agents. I believe they are merely moronic pawns manipulated by enemies of the state. Enemies such as the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, made up mostly of Soviet-born Israelis with strongly anti-Arab views, many of whom live in West Bank settlements. These Israeli settlers loathe President Obama and are infuriated by his efforts to broker a Mid-East peace agreement.

Why do I think a group of rabid Israeli rightists are involved in an effort to distract the United States government and embarrass the President? Because of a woman named Orly Taitz (photo at right). She is a California dentist who obtained a correspondence-school law degree and is using it to challenge the President’s legitimacy in court. She has even gone so far as to produce a forged Kenyan birth certificate in her effort to discredit Obama.

Some commentators are dismissing her as a “fruitcake” and a “wingnut,” but I wonder whether she is something much worse. I suspect she might be a subversive who is trying to take advantage of the prejudice and ignorance still rampant in a segment of white America to disrupt the President’s agenda.

You might recall that Obama’s birthplace was questioned early in his presidential campaign and he survived legal challenges arising from the questioning. Then the charges faded – until recently when Taitz filed a lawsuit on behalf of an Army reserve major, objecting to his deployment orders on the grounds that Obama isn’t legally America’s commander-in-chief.

With CNN loudmouth Lou Dobbs following Obama haters Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in promoting the specious lawsuit, Taitz was catapulted into the spotlight. And now, suddenly, there is a revival of “birther” accusations on the internet and at political meetings.

I think it might be significant that the woman leading these protests belongs to a group of Soviet-born Israelis with fanatical anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments. Her background is suspiciously similar to that of Avigdor Lieberman, Soviet-born leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party.

Born and raised in Kishinev, the capital of the Republic of Moldova, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, Taitz attended Hebrew University and (according to what I read on the web) “has a documented association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobby group.”

I know, the evidence is circumstantial at best, and I might be completely off base. But in the murky world of international skulduggery, weird things happen. Even things as weird of the resurrection of the “birther” movement by a Moldavian-born agitator working for a right-wing party in Israel.