Upset by Ramadan calls to prayer from mosque loudspeakers in the adjacent Arab neighborhood of Tzur Baher waking them in the middle of the night, a group of Jews from the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of southern Jerusalem decided to get revenge. So in the middle of the greatest tension between Israel’s Jewish and Arab populations in a decade, these Jewish Jerusalemites got their own loudspeakers, pointed them toward Tzur Baher – and loudly chanted the Shema prayer at 2:30 am.
Above: file photo
Jerusalem Jews Blast Shema Prayer On Loudspeakers At 2:30 AM To Irritate Arabs
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Upset by Ramadan calls to prayer from mosque loudspeakers in the adjacent Arab neighborhood of Tzur Baher waking them in the middle of the night, a group of Jews from the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of southern Jerusalem decided to get revenge.
So in the middle of the greatest tension between Israel’s Jewish and Arab populations in a decade, these Jewish Jerusalemites got their own loudspeakers, pointed them toward Tzur Baher, and loudly chanted the Shema prayer at 2:30 am.
Video of the “Jewish counterattack” was greeted with enthusiasm on Facebook, Arutz Sheva reported.
Jews “all over Israel” are “routinely harassed by noise pollution from Muslim neighborhoods,” the West Bank settler-run news site reported, calling this a “lesser known intifada.” For centuries, Muslims “made do” with unamplified calls to prayer, Arutz Sheva insisted.
In January, a right-wing city councilman, Aryeh King, started a city investigation into amplified mosque calls to prayer. 200 mosques in the Eastern Jerusalem will have their prayer calls measured to see if the decibel level violates noise pollution laws.
“Just like it's forbidden for us [i.e., Jews] to make loud noises after 12 at night, it will be forbidden for them [as well],” King reportedly said.
The city actually allocated 200,000 shekels ($58,355) for a pilot program to measure the decibel levels of the prayer calls from two mosques in southern Jerusalem. Mosques that are too loud will be blacklisted by the city. They will be ordered to point their loudspeakers toward the center of Arab neighborhoods and will be asked to find other ways to stem late night and early morning noise.
If that doesn’t stop the noise, “a technological solution will be installed to screen and reduce the noise,” Arutz Sheva reported.
Extremely large, loud, loudspeakers are used periodically at the Kotel (Western Wall), primarily buy haredim but also by Zionist Orthodox and secular Israelis. But the events in which these loudspeakers are used normally do not take place in the middle of the night or in the very early hours of the morning.