Ministers to vote on bill to silence Israeli mosques

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation was set to vote Sunday on whether the coalition will support a bill banning mosques from using loudspeaker systems for the Muslim call to prayer.

The prayer calls, traditionally announced through minarets five times a day and often amplified with loudspeakers, have been a frequent target of right-wing ire, with some claiming they are an unnecessarily loud nuisance that echoes in Jewish towns and neighborhoods.

Legislative efforts to stymie the calls have always failed to garner large-scale support, though, and it’s unclear whether this newest bid will find more backing. The bill, penned by Jewish Home MK Moti Yogev, was set to be voted on by the committee in March but was removed from agenda hours before the scheduled meeting.

Likud MKs Miki Zohar and Nurit Koren, Jewish Home MKs Bezalel Smotrich and Shuli Muallem-Refaeli, and Kulanu MK Merav Ben-Ari have also endorsed the legislation.

Supporters of the bill say freedom of religion should take a backseat to quality of life.

The bill would aim to prevent both loud calls to prayer and “conveying religious or nationalist messages, or even words of incitement,” and seeks to ban sound systems at all houses of prayer in the country, not just mosques.

“Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens — in the Galilee, Negev, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa and other places in central Israel — suffer regularly and daily from the noise caused by the call of the muezzin from mosques,” reads the proposed legislation.

“The noise made by these public calls disturbs the rest of the citizens several times a day, including in the early mornings and at nighttime,” it says.

Some 20 percent of Israel’s population are Arab, most of them Muslim, making the calls to prayer a familiar sound in many parts of the country.

The issue of muezzin loudspeakers have been a source of friction in areas where Jews and Arabs live in close quarters. In 2014, the Yisrael Beytenu party revived a proposal that would ban electronic amplification of the calls to prayer.

Also Sunday, the committee will vote on a proposal by Likud MK Oren Hazan to require an Israeli flag be placed at any event attended by Knesset members or public officials.

The bill, which would fine non-compliant event organizers NIS 5,000 ($1,300), was first proposed after the Haaretz newspaper was criticized for removing an Israeli flag from the stage at a New York conference last December. The request to remove the flag was made by PLO official and former chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and came after President Reuven Rivlin had spoken on the stage alongside the flag.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.