The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre occurred when Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli settler and member of the far-right Israeli Kach movement, opened fire on unarmed PalestinianMuslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque (or Mosque of Abraham) at the Cave of the Patriarchs site in Hebron in the West Bank. It took place on February 25, 1994, during the overlapping religious holidays of Purim and Ramadan. 29 worshippers were killed and 125 wounded. The attack ended when Goldstein had expended his ammunition, then he was subdued and beaten to death by survivors.
The attack set off riots and protests throughout the West Bank, and an additional 19 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces within 48 hours of the massacre.
Baruch Kopel Goldstein 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.
The attack set off riots and protests throughout the West Bank, and an additional 19 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces within 48 hours of the massacre.
The Israeli government divided the Cave of the Patriarchs into two sections, one for Jewish worshippers and the other for Muslim worshippers. At 05:00 a.m. on 25 February, 800Palestinian Muslims passed through the east gate of the cave to participate in Fajr, the first of the five daily Islamic prayers.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, Goldstein entered the Isaac Hall of the cave. He was dressed in his army uniform and carried an IMI Galil assault rifle and four magazines of ammunition, which held 35 rounds each. 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 cave and positioned to the rear of the Muslim worshippers, he opened fire with the weapon, killing 29 people and injuring another 125.
Reports after the massacre were often contradictory or ambiguous. 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."There were also reports that he had thrown grenades at the worshippers. Yasser Arafat suggested that the attack was the work of up to 12 men, including Israeli troops. There were also various questions as to the Israeli guards outside the cave having opened fire; while Israeli military officials claim that no Israeli troops fired on the Palestinian worshippers, the New York Times reported that over 40 different Palestinian eyewitnesses, many of them confined to hospital beds with gunshot wounds and thus "unable to compare notes", all corroborated that three Israeli guards opened fire in confusion as the Muslims fled the shrine, with one firing into the crowd.
The testimony of various Israeli military officials was often contradictory. For instance, a Major General asserted that the guards had fired only in the air, but the guards themselves later testified to firing some 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.
The first successful suicide bombing carried out by Palestinian militants inside Israel was launched by Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades in 1994, in retaliation for the massacre carried out by Goldstein. Eight people were killed and 34 wounded in the attack which took place in Afula on April 6, 1994, at the end of the forty day mourning period for Goldstein's victims.
Baruch Kopel Goldstein 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.
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. 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.
According to Ian Lustick, 'by mowing down Arabs he believed wanted to kill Jews, Goldstein was reenacting part of the Purim story'.
Palestinian riots immediately followed the shooting, leading in the following week to the deaths of 25 Palestinians and five Israelis. 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.
Goldstein is buried across from the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement adjacent to Hebron.
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 Goldstein's funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin claimed that even one million Arabs are "not worth a Jewish fingernail." 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."
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.
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."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.
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.
