On 25 February 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and member of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement, carried out a mass shooting of Palestinians who were praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque (Cave of the Patriarchs) in Hebron.George J. Church,"When Fury Rules", Time 7 March 1994 Goldstein, dressed in Israeli army uniform, opened fire with an assault rifle and killed 29 people, including children as young as 12, and wounded 125 others. Goldstein was overpowered and beaten to death by survivors.
The atrocity, which occurred during the Jewish holiday of Purim and the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, strained the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords peace process, immediately setting off mass protests by Palestinians throughout the West Bank. During the ensuing clashes, 20 to 26 Palestinians were killed while 120 were injured in confrontations with the Israeli military,Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger Jewish Terrorism in Israel (). Columbia University Press, 2011. p. 70. and 9 Israeli Jews were also killed.Paul G. Pierpaolo, Jr, "Hebron Mosque Massacre", in Spencer C. Tucker, Priscilla Roberts (eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Political, Social, and Military History (). ABC-CLIO, 2008. p. 438.
Goldstein was widely denounced in Israel and by communities in the Jewish diaspora, with many attributing his act to insanity.1 Wilson, Rodney. 2007. Review Article: Islam and Terrorism. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 34(2):203–213. . Accessed 29 August 2010). Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned the attack, describing Goldstein as a "degenerate murderer" and "a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism". Some Jewish settlers in Hebron lauded him as a hero, viewing his attack as a pre-emptive strike and his subsequent death as an act of martyrdom. Following statements in support of Goldstein's actions, the Jewish ultranationalist Kach party was banned and designated a terrorist organization by the Israeli government.In the Spotlight: Kach and Kahane Chai Center for Defense Information, 1 October 2002
Background of Baruch Goldstein In the 1970s, Baruch Goldstein, who was born and lived in Brooklyn, New York, was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League.Erroll Southers, Homegrown Violent Extremism , Routledge, 2014 p.43 After emigrating to Israel in 1983, he served as a physician in the Israel Defense Forces, first as a conscript, then in the reserve forces. Following the end of his active duty, Goldstein worked as a physician and lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, where he served as an emergency doctor.BBC NEWS "Goldstein had lived in Israel for 11 years and was a doctor in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, just outside Hebron." Goldstein became involved with Kach, and maintained a strong personal relationship with Kahane, whose views, regarded by the Israeli government as racist, had caused his party to be banned from the Knesset in 1988.Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God. 2003, p. 55 Kahane was assassinated in 1990 by Arab terrorist El Sayyid Nosair in New York City, and Goldstein reportedly swore to take revenge for the killing. Goldstein was elected to Kiryat Arba city council and in this capacity assisted in establishing a memorial park dedicated to Kahane.
In 1981, Goldstein wrote a letter, published in The New York Times, which said that Israel "must act decisively to remove the Arab minority from within its borders", which "could be accomplished by initially offering encouragement and incentives to Arabs to leave of their own accord". In October 1993, inside the Ibrahimi mosque, acid was poured over the floor, leaving giant holes in the carpets, and six worshippers were assaulted. From the evidence of the sanctuary guards, Goldstein was identified as the culprit. A letter was written to Yitzhak Rabin, the then Israeli Prime Minister, by the Muslim authorities "regarding the dangers" of Goldstein and asking for action to be taken to prevent daily violations of the mosque.Helm, Sarah. Jewish killer attacked mosque last year: Evidence is mounting that Baruch Goldstein was known to be dangerous well before the massacre . The Independent. 1 March 1994. Four years before the massacre, an agent of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, who had infiltrated Kach, passed a warning to his superiors about the danger posed by Goldstein. The agent ascribed to Goldstein the statement, "There will be a day when one Jew will take revenge on the Arabs."
In Hebron, as elsewhere in the West Bank, tensions ran high after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling however noted that before the massacre, "expressions of Palestinian armed resistance were rare and lacked broad popular support, despite the growing colonization of the West Bank and obstacles to Palestinian economic growth."Kimmerling, Baruch. Clash of Identities: Explorations in Israeli and Palestinian Societies. Columbia University Press, 2008, 261. On 6 December 1993, Goldstein's close friend Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom Lapid were killed in Hebron. As the settlement's emergency responder, Goldstein was present at the murder scene, and he referred to the killers as "nazis".
As the settlement's main emergency doctor, Goldstein was involved in treating victims of Arab-Israeli violence prior to that incident as well. He expressed anti-Arab feelings far before the massacre. Israeli press reports stated that Goldstein refused to treat Arabs, even those serving in the IDF; this was also reflected in comments by his acquaintances. He was known to refuse to treat Druze soldiers who served in the West Bank, claiming that it was against Jewish laws to treat non-Jews.
Massacre The date 25 February 1994 coincided with the Jewish festival of Purim and fell during the Muslim Ramadan. On the eve of the massacre, Goldstein listened to a reading in the Hall of Abraham of the Scroll of Esther, and spoke to others of the need to behave like Esther. Some consider it not coincidental that he then carried out the murders as Purim was celebrated. In this context, the festival of Purim was associated with a reading that concerns Amalek, with whom, in Israeli extremist rhetoric, Palestinians are often identified. Joseph Tuman has conjectured he saw himself as Mordecai. Ian Lustick thinks it likely Goldstein thought of Yasser Arafat as a modern-day Haman. Both Jews and Muslims were permitted to access their respective parts of the compound. At 5:00 a.m. on February 25, around 800 Palestinian Muslims passed through the east gate of the cave to participate in Fajr, the first of the five daily Islamic prayers.Report of Shamgar Commission p. 15 The cave was under Israeli Army guard, but of the nine soldiers supposed to have been on duty, four were late turning up, and only one officer was there.
Shortly afterwards, passing through the Hall of Abraham, Goldstein entered the Hall of Isaac, where some 800 Muslims were at prayer. He was dressed in his army uniform and carried an IMI Galil assault rifle and four magazines of ammunition, which held a total of 140 rounds in 35 rounds per magazine. He was not stopped by the guards, who assumed that he was an officer entering the tomb to pray in an adjacent chamber reserved for Jews. Standing in front of the only exit from the hall and positioned to the rear of the Muslim worshippers, he is reported as having thrown a grenade into the middle of the hall before opening fire,Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel , Columbia University Press, 2011 pp.69ff. eventually killing 29 people and wounding another 125, among them children. Several people were left with paralyzing wounds. According to survivors, Goldstein bided his time until sujūd, the part of the prayer where worshippers prostrate themselves with their heads on the floor.Yoram Peri, The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Stanford University Press, 2000 p. 101. He was overcome when someone in the crowd hurled a fire extinguisher which struck him on the head, allowing the crowd to disarm and then beat him to death.
Reports after the massacre were often contradictory. There was initial uncertainty about whether Goldstein had acted alone; it was reported that eyewitnesses had seen "another man, also dressed as a soldier, handing him ammunition"."Hebron Massacre: Hell comes to a holy place", The Independent (London), 27 February 1994 There were many testimonies that made mention of Israeli guards outside the cave having opened fire. Israeli military officials claim that no Israeli troops fired on the Palestinian worshippers. However, The New York Times interviewed over 40 Palestinian eyewitnesses, many of whom were confined to hospital beds with gunshot wounds, and thus "unable to compare notes". All witnesses corroborated that three Israeli guards opened fire, likely in panic amid the confusion, as the Muslims fled the shrine, with at least one soldier firing into the crowd. During the inquiry, an Israeli Army official said three worshippers died in the stampede following the attack and five Palestinians were killed in street riots within Hebron later that day.
The testimony of various Israeli military officials was often contradictory. For instance, Danny Yatom asserted that two of the guards had fired six or seven shots in the confusion "but only in the air", while the two guards themselves, sergeants Kobi Yosef and Niv Drori, later testified to firing four shots "chest high". The guards' testimony was also at odds with the testimony of their ranking officer in claiming they had seen another Jewish settler enter the cave bearing arms. Tikva Honig-Parnass wrote that 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured by Israeli soldiers who continued to shoot at those who were trying to flee the mosque, at those who were evacuating the wounded, and at people who were rioting at the Ahli hospital. Arafat Baya’at, for one, is reported as having been shot dead by Israeli troops outside the hospital when he picked up a stone to throw at soldiers after seeing a friend of his being carried out of an ambulance. Several Palestinian survivors have told that they believe Israeli soldiers collaborated with Goldstein, stating there were fewer soldiers than usual at the mosque, and that exclusively on that day the metal detector was turned-off and no-one conducted searches: "they [the soldiers] were relaxed and laughing, they didn't think anybody was going to get out alive", said one man who was left paralyzed as a result of being shot by Goldstein.
Violence in the aftermath As word of the incident spread throughout the occupied territories, confrontations broke out in which a further 20 Palestinians were killed and 120 injured.
In Israel Two separate suicide bombings took place in April 1994, carried out by Palestinian militants inside Israel and launched by Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades in retaliation for the massacre carried out by Goldstein. A total of 8 Israeli civilians were killed and 55 wounded in the first attack, which took place in Afula on 6 April, at the end of the forty-day mourning period for Goldstein's victims. Six more were killed and 30 injured in Hadera bus station suicide bombing a week later. Those were the first suicide bombings carried out by Palestinian militants inside Israel. According to Matti Steinberg, then Shin Bet head's advisor on Palestinian affairs, Hamas had until then refrained from attacking civilian targets inside Israel, and the change in this policy was a result of Goldstein's massacre.
In the United States