Baruch Goldstein

Baruch Goldstein
Born	December 9, 1956(1956-12-09) Brooklyn, New York, United States
Died	February 25, 1994(1994-02-25) (aged 37) Hebron, West Bank
Cause of death	Beaten to death
Resting place	Kiryat Arba, across from the Meir Kahane Memorial Park
Residence	Kiryat Arba
Other names	Benjamin Goldstein [1]
Alma mater	Yeshiva University(1977) highest honors, Albert Einstein College of Medicine[1]
Occupation	Physician, (emergency doctor)
Years active	11
Known for	Killing 29 Palestinians and injuring 125
Religion	Judaism
Spouse	Miriam Goldstein

Baruch Kopel Goldstein (Hebrew: ברוך קופל גולדשטיין‎; December 9, 1956 – February 25, 1994) was an American-born Jewish Israeli physician who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Muslims at prayer there and wounding another 150.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre 3 Gravesite and shrine 4 Veneration of Goldstein and celebration of the massacre 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Biography

Goldstein was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush religious day school and Yeshiva University.^[2] He received his medical training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He belonged to the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a militant Jewish organization founded by his boyhood acquaintance Rabbi Meir Kahane.^[3]

After emigrating to Israel in 1983,^[1] he served as a physician in the Israeli Defense Force, 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.^[4] 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^[5] although there was one account of him treating a wounded Palestinian. Goldstein was active in Kahane's Kach party and was third on the party list for the Knesset's 1984 election. ^[6]

[edit] Cave of the Patriarchs massacre

On February 25, 1994, that year's Purim day, Goldstein entered a room in the Cave of the Patriarchs serving as a mosque, wearing "his army uniform with the insignia of rank, creating the image of a reserve officer on active duty" (Shamgar report). He then opened fire, killing 29 people and wounding more than 125.^[7] Mosque guard Mohammad Suleiman Abu Saleh said he thought that Goldstein was trying to kill as many people as possible and described how there were "bodies and blood everywhere." Goldstein was attacked and killed by the worshippers.^[8] According to Ian Lustick, 'by mowing down Arabs he believed wanted to kill Jews, Goldstein was reenacting part of the Purim story'.^[9]

Palestinian riots immediately followed the shooting, leading in the following week to the deaths of 25 Palestinians and five Israelis.^[10] According to Aditi Bhaduri, writing in The Hindu, following the massacre, Israel imposed a two-week curfew on the 120,000 Palestinian residents of the city, while the 400 Jewish settlers remained free to move around.^[11] Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telephoned PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and described the attack as a "loathsome, criminal act of murder".^[12] The Israeli government condemned the massacre, and responded by arresting followers of Meir Kahane, forbidding certain settlers from entering Arab towns, and demanding that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles.^[13] Goldstein was immediately "denounced with shocked horror even by the mainstream Orthodox",^[14] and most in Israel classified Goldstein as insane.^[15]

[edit] Gravesite and shrine

Goldstein is buried across from the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement adjacent to Hebron. The park is named in memory of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Israeli far-right political party Kach, a group classified by the United States and Israeli governments as a terrorist organization. Goldstein was a long-time devotee of Kahane.^[1]

The gravesite has become a pilgrimage site for "Israeli extremists"; a plaque near the grave reads "To the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel." At least 10,000 people have visited the grave since the massacre.^[16] In 1996, members of the Labor Party called for the shrine-like landscaped prayer area near the grave to be removed, and Israeli security officials expressed concern that the grave would encourage extremists.^[17] In 1999, following passage of a law designed to prohibit monuments to terrorists, and an associated Supreme Court ruling, the Israeli Army bulldozed the shrine and prayer area set up near Goldstein's grave.^[18]

[edit] Veneration of Goldstein and celebration of the massacre

At Goldstein's funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin claimed that even one million Arabs are "not worth a Jewish fingernail."^[19][20][21] Samuel Hacohen, a teacher at a Jerusalem college, declared Goldstein the "greatest Jew alive, not in one way but in every way" and said that he was "the only one who could do it, the only one who was 100 percent perfect."^[20][21] In contrast, mainstream Jewish religious leaders "rejected the suggestion that killing Palestinians with an automatic rifle" was authorized by the Torah.^[19]

In the weeks following the massacre, hundreds of Israelis traveled to Goldstein's grave to celebrate Goldstein's actions. Some Hasidim danced and sang around his grave.^[22] Although the government has said that those who celebrated the massacre represented only a tiny minority of Israelis, a New York Times report states that Israeli government claims may understate the phenomenon.^[22] According to one visitor to the gravesite in the wake of the attacks, "If [Goldstein] stopped these so-called peace talks, then he is truly holy because this is not real peace."^[22] Some visitors kissed and hugged the gravestone, or even kissed the earth under which Goldstein was buried, declaring him a "saint" and "hero of Israel."^[22]

The phenomenon of the adoration of Goldstein's tomb persisted for years, despite Israeli government efforts to crack down on those making pilgrimage to Goldstein's grave site.^[16] The grave's epitaph said that Goldstein "gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land".^[23] In 1999, after the passing of Israeli legislation outlawing monuments to "terrorists," the Israeli army dismantled the shrine that had been built to Goldstein at the site of his interment.^[23] In the years after the dismantling of the shrine, radical Jewish settlers continued to celebrate the anniversary of the massacre in the West Bank, sometimes even dressing up themselves or their children to look like Goldstein.^[16][24]

In 2010, Jewish settlers were criticized that during celebrations of Purim they sang songs praising Baruch Goldstein's massacre demonstratively in front of their Arab neighbours. A phrase from the song reads "Dr. Goldstein, there is none other like you in the world. Dr. Goldstein, we all love you… he aimed at terrorists' heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets, and shot, and shot."^[25]

[edit] See also

• Kahanism
• Jewish fundamentalism
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Militancy
• List of terrorist incidents

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs -- Excerpts from the report of the Commission of Inquiry Into the Massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron (aka the "Shamgar Report")
• UN document containing extracts of the Israeli inquiry report
• When Fury Rules Time Magazine, March 7, 1994.

Persondata
Name	Goldstein, Baruch
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 9, 1956
Place of birth	Brooklyn, New York, United States
Date of death	February 25, 1994
Place of death	Hebron, West Bank