Israel is alive with the sound of music.....

Napoleon Bonaparte came to tour the holy land in 1799. One night he slept Ramle, an Arab/Jewish city that today is virtually a suburb of Tel Aviv. For several nights, Napoleon slept in a hostel that wasn’t far from a Moslem minaret, tower. Several times a day – including just before dawn – a Muezzin would climb to the top of the tower and sing out the call to prayer.

Poor exhausted Napoleon was getting tired of being awaked so early every morning, day after day. The next time the Muezzin climbed the tower and started to sing, Napoleon got up, pulled out his gun and shot the guy dead.

That’s one way to handle it.

In recent weeks, Baruch Marzel of Hebron/Kiryat Arba has been facing the same problem. Saudi Arabia maliciously gave money to the local Arabs so they could buy a very powerful loudspeaker and broadcasting system, from which they now broadcast their prayers, five times a day. Just to be obnoxious.

Marzel – one of those pesky “settlers”, and therefore someone I admire hugely – was getting just as tired of it as Napoleon had. But he found another solution.
“I rented a powerful system and put on Carlebach (music) every hour of the day,” Marzel said. The IDF asked me to stop, I told them that when they stop I'll stop – and believe me, they'll stop,” Marzel said.

I wish Marzel well, but I’m not at all sure an awful lot of Arabs won’t -- secretly, if nothing else – find themselves enjoying the Carlebach concerts.

Most of you probably know of Reb Shlomo Carlebach -- that’s him, pictured. Here’s a video of one of his songs, singing at a “Hoshana Rabba” Sukkot service:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvIIRiy2Udg

For you folks in Rio Linda, Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994) was a charismatic singer/songwriter/holy man, whose songs and warm, Hasidic style inspired a whole new movement in Jewish rock n’ roll. No matter who you are, where you live, or what you do, chances are you’ve heard some of Reb Shlomo’s melodies, whether you recognize them or not.

So I not sure Marzel’s tactic will work.

Now that I think about it, back in 1993, when Bubba ‘I-never-had-sex-with-that-woman’ Clinton was President, he, too, found himself getting disgusted with the practices of a minority religious group.

Bubba took a far more lethal approach. When his federal agents - the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco – decided they could no longer tolerate the presence of the religious dissenters in Waco, Texas, they also tried obnoxious noises to harass the community. They played recordings of Buddhist chants, dental drills, and screaming, slaughtered rabbits.

When the BATF still couldn’t oust the dissenters from their home, Bubba’s Attorney General Janet Reno gave the order to saturate the compound with CS gas, even though she knew the community didn’t have gas masks to protect their children.

Not that it mattered – the gas caused the buildings to catch fire, and 86 men, women and children were burned to death.

Can you even imagine what would happen if anyone in Israel acted like either Napoleon or Janet Reno?