Sweet tweets

Birds tweet. So does the American president. What kind of bird is he… a hawk or a cuckoo?

Is there anything more childish, more ridiculous than a leader of the world sitting at his desk and sending ludicrous and often offensive cuckoo tweets to friends and foes alike?

I don’t know what a tweet is. I don’t know what twitter is. I only know simple internet e-mail and it is by that means that I communicate my messages.

Donald Trump’s ratings in polls taken today give him the lowest score of any other American president in history. He speaks from the mouth rather than from the brain. He does not care who he offends. His attitude is “I am the President of the United States and the leader of the western world. I can do whatever I want to do as long as I don’t break laws”.

He has assumed the role of president, secretary of state, senate, house of representatives and every avenue of government which is neither in his expertise nor the legal functions of a president who over-steps authority .

I think that the correct title would be a “benevolent dictator” but I don’t know how benevolent he is.

He cannot decide whether transgender people should use a public bathroom of their birth gender or of their trans-gender. He promised the Americans and the Mexicans that he would build a protective wall along their common lengthy borders. Something perhaps like the Great Wall of China. Where is the wall?

He promised Americans and Israelis that he would move the U.S. Embassy from HaYarkon Street in Tel-Aviv to an unnamed location in Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem.  Nu?  Where is the embassy?

Promises made and promises broken, not much unlike our own Israeli government, except that Bibi Netanyahu, a graduate of America’s prestigious M.I.T. university and a man who is skilled in all aspects of modern technology, does not tweet his messages. He utilizes the telephones and the podium in the plenum of the Knesset. The hands are the hands of Bibi but the voice is the voice of Sara.

But like so many politicians, Bibi breaks promises and agreements. Witness the calamity over the Western Wall plaza. In 2016 he made a solemn promise that an egalitarian section would be made at the Wall so that non-Orthodox Jews and women who wish to pray at the Wall would be treated equally.

The High Court obligated him to fulfill his commitment. The ultra-Orthodox threatened to use their political influence to topple his government if he caved in to pressure from the court and from the leaders of diaspora Jewish communities. But Bibi did not cave in. He simply broke his promise.

And Jews from outside of Israel will know how to respond to a government which refuses to recognize the synagogues in which they pray, a government in which ultra-Orthodox Jews deny the Reform and Conservative movements and insult them by stating that they are “not real Jews”.

Silence in the Knesset. Silence in the Prime Minister’s residence. No one has the courage to tell the haredim among us that they are out of order, that we are a country of laws and that we are obligated to commit ourselves to fulfilling the demands of the High Court. We have become a nation of political cowards.

Perhaps Bibi should indeed follow the practice of his colleague, the American president Donald John Trump. Surely there must be a place in Jerusalem where Bibi could take lessons in learning how to send sweet tweets every morning.

Still, I much prefer the tweets of the birds.  But not especially the tweets of the cuckoos.