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Cave of the Patriarchs massacre

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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 Palestinian Muslims praying inside the Ibrahim Mosque 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. Between 39 and 52 Muslims were killed and more than 100 others wounded. The attack ended when Goldstein 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.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned the attack, describing Goldstein as a "degenerate murderer", "a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism".

Goldstein was praised as a martyr by Jewish extremists in Hebron and his grave subsequently became a site of pilgrimage for his supporters.

Background

Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish resident of the Kiryat Arba settlement and originally from the United States, had previously been involved with the Jewish Defense League, a controversial extremist group which has been characterized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a terrorist organization, and by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Arab hate group. In 1981, Goldstein wrote in a letter to the editor published in the New York Times, that the

disparity of birth rates, associated with a declining Aliyah, assures Israel of an Arab majority in Israel (70 years?) unless steps are taken to prevent this from occurring. Ceding the "West Bank" to the "Palestinians" would, therefore, not solve the problem... it would serve only to further jeopardize Israel's security and betray a Biblical trust.

The harsh reality is: if Israel is to avert facing the kinds of problems found in Northern Ireland today, it must act decisively to remove the Arab minority from within its borders.

After immigrating to Israel, Goldstein became involved with Kach, and had a strong personal relationship with Meir Kahane, the militant Jewish nationalist whose views, regarded by the Israeli government as racist, had caused his party to be banned from the Knesset in 1988. Kahane was assassinated in 1990 by Arab militant El Sayyid Nosair, and Goldstein reportedly swore to take revenge for the killing.

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, 800 Palestinian 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 into 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.

Response

Israel

Israeli government

Goldstein's actions were immediately condemned by the Israeli government, the mainstream Israeli parties and the Israeli populace in general. The Kach movement, with which he was affiliated, was outlawed as a terrorist organization. The cabinet decided to confiscate the weapons of some they regarded as right-wing extremists and put them in administrative detention.

In an address to the Knesset, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin denounced Goldstein. Rabin, addressing not just Goldstein and his legacy but also other settlers he regarded as militant, declared,

You are not part of the community of Israel... You are not part of the national democratic camp which we all belong to in this house, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law... We say to this horrible man and those like him: you are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.

Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the Likud party declared, "This was a despicable crime. I express my unequivocal condemnation."

Shamgar Commission

The Israeli government appointed a commission of inquiry headed by then president of the Supreme Court, Judge Meir Shamgar. The commission in the epilogue to its report called the massacre "a base and murderous act, in which innocent people bending in prayer to their maker were killed". Among its specific conclusions were:

  • Goldstein acted alone in planning the massacre, telling no one of his scheme.
  • Coordination between the IDF, the police, and the Civil Administration was problematic.
  • The political leadership and security forces could not have been expected to predict the massacre.
  • Testimony from survivors referring to IDF assistance and grenade explosions in the massacre was found to be contradictory and inconsistent; investigators did not find any grenade fragments.
  • There were, as claimed by some Jews seeking to justify Goldstein's actions as a preemptive strike, substantial warnings of a coming Hamas terror attack against Jews. It further stated that:
8.2a "... warnings were issued regarding an expected attack by Hamas following the distribution of its leaflets in Hebron."
8.7a "Following an incident in Abu-Dis, which ended in the deaths of a number of members of Az-A-Din Al-Qassam , emotions ran high among the Moslem worshipers (about two hundred), who shouted hostile slogans ("Qassam", "kill the Jews"), , making it necessary to call in army and Border Police forces. According to one of the Moslem witnesses, the Jews also shouted hostile slogans." (This is in reference to persons present on the previous evening.)
8.8a "Those in charge of security at the Tomb were given no intelligence reports that an attack by a Jew against Moslem worshipers could be expected, particularly since intelligence reports warned of the opposite: an attack by Hamas. Therefore, there was concern about an attack by Arabs against Jews."

Critics of the commission have suggested that Shamgar's judicial record has "consistently displayed his leniency toward the settlers, including those convicted of crimes against the Palestinians, but especially toward the soldiers who had fired at the Palestinians."

Israeli public

A poll of 500 Israeli adults for the International Centre for Peace in the Middle East found that 78.8 percent of people condemned the Hebron massacre while 3.6 percent praised Goldstein.

Some of Goldstein's friends claimed that Goldstein experienced an emotional crisis in the previous December, when two of his friends were ambushed by Arab attackers near Kiryat Arba. As head of the local emergency medical team, Goldstein was called, and Mordechai Lapid and his 19-year-old son died in his arms. At Goldstein's eulogy Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba stated: "Goldstein could not continue to bear all the cases he was seeing as a doctor; he might have gone insane from all he went through." Rabbi Lior added that "since Goldstein did what he did in God's name, he is to be regarded as a Righteous Man" and asserted that Goldstein was "a martyr of God"; "His hands are innocent, and his heart is pure."

Immediately after the attack, Mike Guzofsky, spokesman for Kahane Chai in New York and a close friend of Goldstein said, "He wanted to stop the peace process dead. He couldn't have picked a better day – Purim, when Jews fight back."

Many Hebron Jews claimed that Goldstein, in his capacity of head medical officer in Kiryat Arba, was aware of inside information warning of an upcoming Arab pogrom and acted in order to prevent this. They also alleged the failure of the army to provide proper security under said threat of attack.

A pamphlet named Baruch Hagever was published in 1994 and a book called Baruch Hagever: Sefer Zikaron la-Kadosh Baruch Goldstein in 1995, in which various rabbis praised Goldstein's action as a pre-emptive strike in response to Hamas threats of a pogrom, and wrote that it is possible to view his act as following five Halachic principles.

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburgh has been detained by Israeli authorities several times in conjunction with his praising the massacre, supposedly according to his interpretation of the writings of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. According to Ginzburgh, given the political status of the West Bank, the killing of Arab noncombatants is "fully legitimate".

Veneration of Goldstein

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. 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. According to one visitor to the gravesite in the wake of the attacks, "If 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."

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. The grave's epitaph said that Goldstein "gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land". In 1999, after the passing of Israeli legislation outlawing monuments to "terrorists," the Israeli army acted to dismantle the shrine that had been built to Goldstein at the site of his interment. 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.

Jewish diaspora

In the United Kingdom, Chief Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks stated,

Such an act is an obscenity and a travesty of Jewish values. That it should have been perpetrated against worshippers in a house of prayer at a holy time makes it a blasphemy as well... Violence is evil. Violence committed in the name of God is doubly evil. Violence against those engaged in worshipping God is unspeakably evil.

An editorial in The Jewish Chronicle written by Chaim Bermant denounced the Kach organisation to which Goldstein belonged as "Neo-Nazis" and a U.S. creation, funded by American money and a product of American gun culture. The same edition also reported that some liberal synagogues in the UK had begun fund-raising for Goldstein's victims.

Palestinian public

Angry mobs began rioting in the aftermath of the massacre, which led to the deaths of 26 more Palestinians and 9 Israelis. As a reaction to the trauma induced in children in Hebron, the Palestinian Child Arts Center (PCAC), a non-governmental, non-profit organization was founded. The activities of the centre primarily involve the intellectual development of Palestinian children, and to reinforce a positive role for the child within Palestinian society and culture.

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.

Arab public and governments

In Amman, Jordan, 77-year-old British tourist Howard Long was stabbed by Arab protesters. The attacker, Khalid Husni Al-Korashi, was subsequently arrested and the Jordanian Interior Ministry called for its citizens to show calm and restraint in their response.

In March 1994, a Jewish American was shot to death by a Lebanese immigrant in New York City, in what prosecutors attributed to retaliation for the massacre.

Footnotes

  • ^i The first suicide car bomb attack was the Mehola Junction bombing in the West Bank on April 16, 1993. "A year later, on April 6, 1994, Hamas carried out its first successful suicide car bomb attack in Israel proper when a car packed with nearly 400 pounds of explosives detonated beside a bus picking up students in the Israeli town of Afula ..."

References

  1. ^ "When Fury Rules". Time Magazine. March 7, 1994. p. 2.
  2. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,980291-3,00.html
  3. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/01/world/west-bank-massacre-overview-rabin-urges-palestinians-put-aside-anger-talk.html?scp=4&sq=Goldstein%20Rabin&st=cse
  4. Alan Cowell (March 2, 1994). "WEST BANK MASSACRE; In 'Tragic Error,' Soldiers Kill a Settler". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  5. Youssef M. Ibrahim (March 6, 1994). "The World; Palestinians See a People's Hatred in a Killer's Deed". New York Times. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  6. Kimball, Charles. When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs. 2003, page 130
  7. ^ "Graveside party celebrates Hebron massacre". BBC News. March 21, 2000. Retrieved October 19, 2009.
  8. ^ Bouckaert, Peter. Center of the Storm: a case study of human rights abuses in Hebron District. 2001, page 82
  9. http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terror2000_2001.htm
  10. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=123
  11. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/26/world/l-a-history-of-anti-arab-feeling-326254.html
  12. Kushner, Harvey W. Encyclopedia of Terrorism. 2003, page 150
  13. Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God. 2003, page 55
  14. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/hebron-massacre-brooklyn-doctor-with-a-prescription-for-hatred-1396680.html
  15. Report of Shamgar Commission p. 15
  16. "Hebron Massacre: Hell comes to a holy place", The Independent (London), 27 February 1994
  17. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/16/world/that-day-hebron-special-report-soldier-fired-crowd-survivors-massacre-say.html?pagewanted=1
  18. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/18/world/confusing-israeli-testimony-poses-possibility-of-hebron-accomplice.html?pagewanted=1
  19. http://palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_israel_hebron_shooting_1994.php
  20. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/01/world/west-bank-massacre-overview-rabin-urges-palestinians-put-aside-anger-talk.html?pagewanted=all
  21. quotes from The Jewish Chronicle (London) 4 March 1994, pages 1 and 2
  22. ^ Commission of Inquiry Into the Massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron - Excerpts from the Report
  23. Shamgar Commission report>
  24. http://www.mepc.org/journal_shahak/shahak48.asp
  25. . London. 4 March 1994: 2. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |jopurnal= ignored (help)
  26. The Making of a Murderous Fanatic, Time, March 7, 1994.
  27. Ilana Baum and Tzvi Singer in Yediot Aharonot, 28 February 1994.
  28. http://www.mepc.org/journal_shahak/shahak48.asp
  29. Auerbach, Jerold S. Hebron Jews. 2009, page 128
  30. Geoffrey Paul (New York) and Jenni Frazer (Jerusalem) From Brooklyn to Kirya Arba in The Jewish Chronicle (London), 4 March 1994.
  31. Motti Inbari, Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount: Who Will Build the Third Temple? (State University of New York Press, 2009), p132.
  32. Don Seeman, Violence, ethics, and divine honor in modern Jewish thought, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 73 (2005), 1015-1048.
  33. http://www.forward.com/articles/8955/
  34. Peri, Yoram. The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. 200, page 112-3
  35. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/01/world/hundreds-of-jews-gather-to-honor-hebron-killer.html?pagewanted=1
  36. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/30/world/israel-destroys-shrine-to-mosque-gunman.html
  37. The Jewish Chronicle (London) 4 March 1994, page 1 and then expanded on page 23
  38. Chaim Bermant Has one settler settled the settlers future? in The Jewish Chronicle (London), 4 March 1994
  39. The Jewish Chronicle (London), 4 March 1994
  40. ^ Barsky, Yehudit. The Brooklyn Bridge Shooting: An Independent Report and Assessment. The American Jewish Committee. Nov. 2000. Accessed June 12, 2006.
  41. Irving Epstein (2008) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children's Issues Worldwide Greenwood Press, ISBN 0-313-33878-7 p 197
  42. Gus Martin (2009). Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues (3rd, illustrated ed.). SAGE. ISBN 1412970598, 9781412970594. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  43. Stork, Joe; Human Rights Watch (2002). Erased in a moment: suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians (Illustrated ed.). Human Rights Watch. ISBN 1564322807, 9781564322807. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  44. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/nyregion/following-up.html
  45. Matthew Levitt and Dennis Ross (2007). Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Illustrated ed.). Yale University Press. pp. pp. 11-12. ISBN 0300122586, 9780300122589. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
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