Jamal Zahalka
Jamal ZahalkaFlash 90

MK Jamal Zahalka (Joint List) blasted on Sunday the proposed “Muezzin Law”, which would ban the use of loudspeakers in houses of worship – a move intended to end the noise pollution caused by mosques using high volume electronic loudspeakers during Islam's five daily calls to prayer.

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved the bill on Sunday, clearing the way for its passage by the Knesset.

The proposed piece of legislation, claimed Zahalka, who serves in Israel's Knesset, violates what he claims is the country’s fundamentally Islamic, Arabic, Palestinian character.

Speaking to the Hamas mouthpiece Falastin on Sunday, Zahalka added that anyone bothered by the loud mosque calls to prayer – which can be heard blasting for miles late at night and before dawn – should leave the country and go back where they came from, a thinly-veiled assertion that Jews are not indigenous to the land known in antiquity as “Judea”.

“The muezzin’s voice will continue to thunder across the country, and anyone who doesn’t like that or is irritated by the muezzin’s call to prayer can go back to their place of origin and not have to hear the muezzin.”

Zahalka also said he opposed the flying of the Israeli flag in or around the Old City of Jerusalem, claiming the holy city is Muslim, and that the presence of an Israeli flag there constituted a violation of the international status quo.