Ben Gvir instructs police to stop mosques from using speakers for call to prayer
Arab mayors, MKs decry move as attempt to provoke Muslim citizens; far-right minister defends measure as fighting ‘hazard’ of noise, notes similar efforts in other countries
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has instructed the police to confiscate speakers from mosques and fine them for noise in a bid to stop the Muslim houses of worship from broadcasting calls to prayer.
Right-wing lawmakers and activists have spearheaded efforts to muffle mosque loudspeakers over the years. Jewish residents of East Jerusalem and other areas of Israel have long complained about what they say is the excessive noise coming from mosques, saying that among other problems it wakes them up in the early hours of the morning.
Muezzins use loudspeakers in mosques to issue calls to the faithful to come and pray five times a day, including the predawn Fajr prayer.
“The law provides the option to confiscate the audio systems [in mosques]. It’s an effective tool for deterrence. The moment we use this tool, it will echo across the [Muslim] sector… At the end of the day, we need to get results in the field,” Ben Gvir wrote to police commanders in a letter published late Saturday, adding that he would work to submit a bill that would eventually raise fines for mosques that were making noise.
Mayors of Arab towns told Channel 12 that they saw this move as “a new provocation from Ben Gvir” against the Arab and Muslim communities that could lead to chaos and riots.
Senior United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni said that both his party and ultra-Orthodox Shas oppose the move.
The Abraham Initiatives organization, which seeks equality and cooperation between Israel’s Jews and Arabs, said this was another sign of Ben Gvir’s attempt to politicize the police.
“While crime organizations walk free, Minister Ben Gvir continues to use the police as a political tool to create more tension, chaos, and hate. This report once again proves that under Ben Gvir, the only people who can feel safe from the police are crime families while the civilian population comes under attack from him,” the organization said.
The organization’s statement referred to the record numbers of crime-related murders in the Arab sector in the last couple of years. As of Sunday, 218 Arabs have been murdered this year, matching the number ast the same time last year, according to data from the organization.
Arab Islamist Ra’am party chair Mansour Abbas urged “competent” members of the government to “restrain the instigator of the religious war, Ben Gvir, who is trying to ignite flames and drag Muslim Arab citizens to respond to his provocations.”
In a post on X, Abbas claimed that since Ben Gvir had failed to spark violence at the Temple Mount through attempts to upend the fragile status quo there, he was now trying to provoke tensions at mosques.
MK Ahmad Tibi of Hadash-Ta’al accused the minister of using the war against Hamas in Gaza as an excuse to provoke violence and “deepen the ongoing oppression of the Arab public.”
“Netanyahu holds responsibility for this rampage by the pyromaniac minister,” he wrote on X.
Ben Gvir, however, told Channel 12 that he was “proud” to move forward with a policy of “stopping unreasonable noise from mosques and other sources that has become a hazard for Israel’s residents.”
“In our debates, it arose that most Western countries, and even some Arab countries, limit the noise and have many laws on the matter. It’s only neglected in Israel,” Ben Gvir’s office said in a statement.
“Prayer is a basic right, but it cannot come at the expense of the quality of life of residents who suffer from unbearable noise. The issue has been neglected for decades, and now, the minister, together with [Environmental Protection] Minister Idit Silman, is working diligently to improve the situation for the good of all residents, Arabs and Jews,” the statement said.
It is not the first time Ben Gvir has taken aim at the call to prayer. In 2013, well before he was a minister, Ben Gvir and a group of other far-right activists woke residents of the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Ramat Aviv with speakers blasting calls to prayer in a stunt they said was designed to show how other areas of the country are roused from their sleep by the noise.
Proposed Knesset legislation known as the Muezzin Bill, which would limit the use of loudspeakers for religious purposes, cleared its first hurdle toward becoming law in March 2017 but was eventually left dead in the water.
Critics of the bill argued that the measure unfairly targets mosques.
Other critics of the bill argued that it is superfluous, as the problem can be tackled using existing noise pollution laws. Proponents argue that police do not enforce the existing rules, and thus more specific legislation is needed.
