“Why did the coalition decide to pass this additional law now? Because they want to insult Muslims. They want to insult Muslims-just insult them, without there being any tangible value- because it works well for them with their constituencies, with the Likud Central Committee, for the upcoming primaries.”-Yesh Atid MK, Yair Lapid
“In actual fact, when I speak to my Muslim friends, it is clear that there is good will on all sides to both preserve religious freedoms and to be considerate of all people in the pre-dawn hours. We can deal with the Muezzin issue without hurting or offending anyone.”- Likud MK Yehuda Glick (Jewish Press)
“If mosques are silenced, we will make sure that the muezzin will be heard in churches, in Nazareth, in Haifa, in Jaffa and in Jerusalem. This bill poses a danger not only to mosques or to Muslim Arab citizens, but also endangers churches and Christian Arabs and the Palestinian identity.”- Arab Knesset member, Basel Ghattas (Joint List)
The negative reactions of Jews to the recently proposed “muezzin bill” to regulate the decibel levels of the Islamic call to prayer in Israel, speaks volumes about our supposed sovereign nation. The Arabs naturally hate the proposal, since in theory, it is an attempt to limit an obvious provocation. The leftist rags and politicians all refer to it as a controversial and hostile bill. Anything that offends Muslims naturally offends them. Such types are more bothered with building Jewish homes in liberated Samaria than the irritation that Islamic loudspeakers causes towards other Jews. Living where they do, many aren’t even subjected to this daily lunacy.
Some of the faces of the new religious “peace movements” oppose the bill, since they too grovel before the Arabs to perpetuate a myth of shared interests, and the delusion of a peace between citizens that allows everyone to eat cake, retain the cake, and call it their own. Their naive advocates speak of the need for dialogue with local Muslims rather than legislation. The Arab reaction is normal, since most of them are Muslim and they understand what the loud call to prayer signifies. The reaction of Jews is pathologically abnormal but expected, since so many Jews are accustomed to behaving like dhimmis in their own country.
Controversial? Hostile? Only a grasshopper would think so. The desire to put an end to an obnoxious form of harassment deliberately used to show Islamic supremacy is hardly provocative, except in the sense that a victim finds resistance hostile. There is no controversy here. Only Jewish weakness and debasement on display. No self-respecting nation allows a hostile population to harass its citizens five times daily with intrusive blaring sounds. As Rabbi Yisrael Samet of Lod noted after his efforts to reach out to local Islamic leaders failed: “The law is meant for people who refuse to compromise.” As such, the silly suggestions of those who propose Muslims use WhatsApp to alert Muslims to prayer illustrate that they haven’t a clue about the true nature of the adhan (call to prayer).
Until rather recently, I was fortunate to live in a remote part of the country where the muezzins aren’t heard. Now that I live in a more developed area, I have an inkling of what so many other Jews have to deal with, based upon limited empirical experience. But I know that based upon the distance of the nearest Arab villages from where I live, the decibel level certainly doesn’t need to
be so loud for it to be heard locally. Unless they want to harass Jews and disturb their sleep. And they do. There is nothing beautiful or haunting about harassment. And one who knows Islamic history, dhimmi laws, and rudimentary Islamic theology knows full well that Islam isn’t about passivity and humility.
It is apparent that Jews don’t have to be residents of hostile Arab countries to be dhimmis. The worst form of dhimmitude is self-imposed, and the condition transcends region. It is the Israeli version of the “mah yomru hagoyim” syndrome (what will the gentile say)?
The bill will probably never pass, and if it does by some miracle it does, there isn’t a Jew’s chance in Arabia that the bill will have any teeth or that it will be enforced. Probably, it will become like the bill which called for the death penalty for terrorists. If ever there was a bill that should have unanimous support, that would be it. But even the advocates of that bill were merely using it as a means of coming across as strong on security. The powers that be in Israel will never allow terrorists to be killed because there would be a never-ending assembly line of murderers waiting to breathe their last. What would Amnesty International say?
The impetus for this bill is motivated largely by the same desire. To portray one group as strong on security and the Arab question. Yet the problem of muezzins is secondary to the problem of Muslims and mosques, and this is the problem that the “rightists” of Habayit Hayehudi don’t understand. The decibel level would be a non-issue if the halachic criteria for which gentiles may remain in the land were enforced. In the absence of that we have pseudo-right-wingers playing games with the real problems, and an even more upsetting category: Those who are terrified of provoking an already provoked population.
This kind of self-imposed dhimmitude creates the kind of society where a Bedouin can escape legal prosecution when his wandering camel kills a Jewish motorist on the Negev roads. Not long ago, a resident of the Negev community of Retamim, David Cohen, was killed by a straying camel. For once the camel was traced to a name and a face. But the Bedouin got off scot free because he claims he gave it to someone else. The police have no interest in investigating, arresting, or pressing charges. And like so many other criminal acts by Arabs, the system of dhimmitude puts the brakes on any sense of justice. Save for the efforts of the legal group Regavim to obtain a modicum of justice, this issue would have disappeared from news feeds.
Self-debasement to appease foreign interests explains a country which destroys her own Jewish communities, and a system of Jewish leaders telling people not to protest the government’s impending actions. Consider the liberated community of Amona slated for destruction. Last time around several years ago, the Yassamnikim thugs at the behest of then PM Olmert cracked open Jewish skulls with truncheons. Dhimmitude of the self-imposed type may Heaven forbid create another atrocity soon. And there are so many other examples, too many of them to list:
Dhimmitude on display….
* Atop the Temple Mount where the accursed Jordanian Waqf controls OUR holiest site. Where Arab mobs jeer and sometimes stone visiting Jews who cannot utter our sacred shema or make a bracha (blessing) on a cup of water.
* In a country where entire regions are “no-go” zones for Jews. Go at your own risk to life and limb. The kind of country which hands over the areas we drive through to Arab terrorists and then create the insane construct of an “Area C”. You can drive through, but you can’t get out of your car lest you venture into Fatahland. And if you should have a flat-tire and in need of a repair?
* In the response to a deliberate hostile Arab policy of blaring out their call to prayer 5x daily at obscene decibels. The Jew in many sections of the country is jolted awake because Arabs can harass (in the name of religion) without any recourse.
* In the response of activists like R’ Yehuda Glick who (in addition to his recent dangerous associations with evangelical missionaries like Hayovel) calls for “dialogue” with Muslims rather than legislation. And on the classical left you have the nebbish politicians whining of intolerance.
Dialogue with demons? What planet does Glick live on? As a victim of Arab terror despite his parve universal message, his attempts for “equality” led to an attack on his life, which thank G-d he survived. When has dialogue ever worked with violent fanatics who seek nothing but our national destruction? These “Alternative Peace” types may have their selective cadre of “moderate Muslims” in their inner circle uttering sweet nothings in their ears, but at the end of the day, the dominant Arab response is NO. There is a reason the decibel level is so high. It has everything to do with provocation. What will dialogue do? They demand that the call to prayer in its loud unregulated fashion continues unabated. Despite the popularity in select circles with this notion that we can both keep our separate “narratives”, the reality is that there cannot be two winners. Let them blare the call to prayer in any number of their Arab countries. But in the Jewish state? The Jew who wants dialogue will receive death in return.
Try the call for “mincha” in “enlightened” Jordan or example, and see how that fares for you. The price will be your arms, legs, and head. In a time that Jews should act like our Maccabee forebears, we have people like President Rivlin and Yehuda Glick condemning the bill and calling for dialogue and mutual tolerance. The universal Jew will continue to get stoned by the same Arabs he wishes to share Turkish coffee with.
We Can Have Our Shabbat Siren….
On a related note, one non-Jewish “hasbara” activist recently stuck his foot in his mouth when he opined on his Facebook page on the proposed “muezzin bill” and tried to make a parallel to the innocuous “Shabbat Siren”. Bear in mind that this person fancies himself a hard-liner on security, and fully claims to support Jewish sovereignty everywhere in Israel. Yet in his desire to
pander to his more liberal Jewish supporters, in the absence of any understanding of the issues, he showed extraordinary arrogance by noting:
“Sometimes the ultra-orthodox show themselves to be part of the problem, this is one of those times.”
In short, as this ignoramus saw it, the “ultra-orthodox” are to blame for the pre-Shabbat siren, that once a week benign quick reminder that the Jewish people’s sacred day is arriving and that labor should cease. My own response to this perverse analogy was tweeted out later that day:
“Only a buffoon and an outsider would equate the loud, aggressive, five times a day, Islamic “call to prayer”, with the pre-Shabbat siren in Israel.”
If nothing else, such sentiments should open the eyes of decent intelligent Jews who prop up such people because they require gentile supporters of Israel. To this I say, the true decent gentile supporters of Israel do not need to be propped up or found. They are already there. They are the Bnai Noach of the world, the decent gentiles who feel for Israel with no evangelical intentions whatsoever, and in the personage of such public personalities as Jon Voight, Col. Richard Kemp, and others.
Controlling the Fifth Column
If we cannot prevent the plethora of mosques, minarets, and muezzins which litter the country, not to mention the ever-growing Muslims within, what chance is there to prevent the traditional Islamic call to prayer, which has always represented Islam’s arrogant mandate? In an ideal state, there would be neither Muslims nor mosques. Sadly, we are far from ideal times, and we have more mitnavyim (Hellenists) than Maccabees in our midst. As such, we will continue to bear witness to further acts of dhimmitude.
Next time you hear the call for prayer in Israel, consider these issues. Hear the call to prayer with a Jewish ear, and see their hostile purpose with a Jewish eye. Those Jews who act like emasculated mityavnim and ignore Arab and Islamic aggression to perpetuate personal fantasies of shared brotherhood forged by some nonsensical mutual identity, be it “indigenous, Abrahamic, or otherwise”, will have Jewish blood on their hands. Because they prevent the kinds of things that need to be fixed for the country to become healthy. Those who ignore the call for prayer, ignore the true intent behind it, a desire to encourage Jihad and martyrdom, and to wage eternal war with the infidel. And in Israel, the call to prayer is a call for Islamic supremacy.
A little dignity. In the Arab countries Jews could never raise their heads high, carry weapons, ride horses, or even build their synagogues. It is OUR country. G-d gave it to us. We should start acting like we believe it to be so.
