Baruch Goldstein and the Massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs
The mass murder of Muslims carried out by Dr. Baruch Goldstein in the Ibrahimi Mosque inside the Cave of the Patriarchs on 25th February 1994 is an event that is widely known to anyone with a familiarity with Israeli politics and/or history, but which has little recognition outside of those circles.
Indeed in recent years I have seen American Christian Zionists laud Goldstein as a hero while being completely ignorant that as a long-term member of the Kach. Goldstein had an avowed hatred of goyim – meaning anyone not born jewish according to halakhah (i.e., jewish religious law) – (1) and especially of Christians. (2)
This is in line with the general political views of the Israeli settler movement; where Goldstein has long been viewed as a hero and a martyr to their cause. (3) While it has long been held that the mass murder committed by Goldstein was the result of radicalising politics in Israel throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, (4) which culminated in the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Goldstein’s fellow jewish radical Yigal Amir. (5)
It is important to stress the sheer callousness of Goldstein’s act. Since on Purim 1994 – which coincided with the first Friday of Ramadan - ‘Dr. Goldstein bought his semiautomatic rifle with him to Purim prayers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and fired into the neighbouring room where Muslims were at prayer.’ (6)
The result was twenty-nine dead (including children) and one hundred and twenty-five wounded with the worshippers understandably angry and who – when Goldstein stopped firing to reload – subdued him and then beat him to death. (7)
In essence Goldstein was an utter coward who – rather than face his enemies – decided to shoot them in the back while they were fulfilling their religious obligations in the next room to jews fulfilling theirs.
Conduct such as this doesn’t come from ‘radicalised political circumstances’, but rather something much deeper and that deep problem is Purim and Judaism’s attitude to non-jews.
This is nicely illustrated by the fact that Purim – which celebrates the mass murder of non-jews (specifically Persians) who didn’t want the jews ruling their country – (8) has long been the cause of jews to publicly insult and/or murder Christians because they are ‘like Haman’ and therefore are the eternal enemies of the jews. (9)
Link this to the conduct of the settlers in and around Hebron – where Goldstein lived – in regards to Purim and you get – along with Goldstein’s gentile-hating ideology Kach – the reason for his cowardly murder of defenceless men and boys.
Goldstein likely attended the 1986 Purim celebration in Hebron when the settlers put a kaffiyeh – the famous Palestinian scarf - on the Haman figurine before they lynched it. In the 1989 Purim celebration the settlers marched through the Arab neighbourhoods of the Hebron with a skeleton with a kaffiyeh on with a noose around its neck and burned Palestinian flags. The jews then promptly tried to introduce a Torah Ark into the Tomb of the Patriarchs during the time set aside for the Muslim prayers contrary to Israeli government regulations. While in 1990 the Purim parade from Beit Hadassah went to the Tomb of Patriarchs and publicly burned Palestinian flags. (10)
So in summary we can see that the reason for Goldstein’s massacre of defenceless Muslim men and boys in the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994 was not to do with ‘radicalised Israeli politics’, but rather to do with his taking the Purim festival Judaism literally – helped along by Rabbi Meir Kahane’s ideology of Kach - and promptly trying to murder every member of Amalek (i.e., non-jewish enemies of Judaism) he could find.
References
(1) For a good summary of these views see Israel Shahak, 2002, ‘Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years’, 3rd Edition, Pluto Press: Sterling, pp. 75-98; for a detailed look see Raphael Mergui, Philippe Simonnot, 1987, ‘Israel’s Ayatollahs: Meir Kahane and the Far Right in Israel’, 1st Edition, Saqi: London
(2) See Elliot Horowitz, 2007, ‘Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence’, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, pp. 149-185
(3) Max Blumenthal, 2013, ‘Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel’, 1st Edition, Nation: New York, pp. 308-309
(4) Martin Gilbert, 1998, ‘Israel: A History’, 1st Edition, Doubleday: London, p. 569
(5) Ilan Pappe, 2011, ‘The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel’, 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven, p. 171
(6) Horowitz, Op. Cit., p. 7
(7) https://www.haaretz.com/settlers-remember-gunman-goldstein-hebron-riots-continue-1.263834
(8) Horowitz, Op. Cit., pp. 23-62
(9) Ibid., pp. 81-146
(10) Ibid., pp. 6-7