Goldstein, Baruch (1957–1994)

Baruch Goldstein (born Benjamin Carl Goldstein), an ultra-nationalist and member of the Jewish group Kahane Chai, massacred 29 Muslims bowed in prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, a city in the West Bank, in 1994.

Born in Brooklyn, Goldstein was a serious and quiet child, graduating a year early near the top of his high school class. At Yeshiva University in Manhattan, Goldstein changed his name to Baruch and became involved in Kahane Chai, a group founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane, a militant Jewish nationalist who had argued that no Jew was safe as long as there was a single Arab in the land of Israel. Goldstein met his wife at Kahane Chai headquarters in Jerusalem, and Kahane officiated at their wedding. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990.

Goldstein graduated from medical school and moved to Israel in 1983, joining the Kiryat Arba settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Kiryat Arba is one of many Jewish settlements near Hebron, a town of nearly 100,000 Arabs. Goldstein worked as an Israeli army doctor in Hebron and served for several years as a Kahane Chai representative on the Kiryat Arba local council. Admirers and friends said that his anger grew as he tended to Jewish settlers who had been shot in Arab-Israeli violence in Hebron. He and many other right-wing settlers did not support the peace talks between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In an interview on Army Radio a few months before he attacked the mosque, Goldstein complained that the army was not protecting Jewish settlers.

Before dawn on February 25, 1994, Goldstein walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs carrying an automatic weapon. At the time, Jewish settlers were allowed to carry weapons inside the holy site, held to be the burial place of Abraham. The site, called the Hebron shrine by Jews and the Ibrahimi Mosque by Muslims, is sacred to both religions and divided into separate prayer halls. Goldstein burst into the mosque and opened fire on a crowd of praying Muslims, killing 29 before the shocked crowd bludgeoned him to death. About 125 others were wounded.

During an Israeli government commission's investigation, Palestinian witnesses and army guards raised the possibility of a second gunman. However, the commission determined that Goldstein had told no one, including his wife, of his plans. The government subsequently outlawed Kahane Chai and arrested some of its leaders.

Goldstein's supporters among the Jewish settlers transformed his grave into a shrine and pilgrimage site. Many maintained that Goldstein's actions were justifiable, telling U.S. and British journalists that the doctor had possessed inside information on a large Arab attack in Kiryat Arba. No proof of this claim has been provided, however. Having passed legislation banning monuments to terrorists, the Israeli government razed the shrine to Goldstein. However, they left the controversial inscription on Goldstein's headstone, which refers to him as a “martyr” with “clean hands and heart.”