An American-Israeli doctor and extremist Jew, he was a member of the Kach Movement party. He worked as a doctor in the Israeli army, and committed the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in the city of Hebron on February 25, 1994, corresponding to Ramadan 15, 1415 AH.
Birth and upbringing
Baruch Goldstein was born on December 9, 1956 in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn in the state of New York, United States of America, and comes from an Orthodox family.
He was a member of the Kach Movement party, which was banned from running in Israeli elections due to its racist, anti-democratic platform. He tried to run for the Knesset elections but was rejected because he held dual citizenship.
Goldstein always said that there is a time to practice medicine and another time to kill.
Study and training
He studied at the Flatbush Yeshiva in Brooklyn (a private Modern Orthodox Jewish day school), then enrolled at Einstein College of Medicine, specializing in trauma and emergency medicine.
Medical experience
He worked as a doctor in the Israeli army after immigrating to the occupied Palestinian territories in 1983. He started as a conscript and then became a member of the reserve forces.
After the end of active service, he continued to work as a doctor and lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, where he worked as an emergency doctor.
Despite his hostile views, he received two commendations from the Israeli army in 1993 in recognition of his medical work, and in January 1994 he was recommended for promotion from the rank of captain to major.
The Ibrahimi Mosque massacre
On the morning of Friday, February 25, 1994, Goldstein entered the hall of the Ibrahimi Mosque, wearing his helmet and military uniform, carrying a pistol, a rifle, and a bag full of bullet ammunition. He waited for the worshipers to prostrate and fired at them with his machine gun.
An eyewitness said that Goldstein was not alone, “but was helped by settlers in firing the bullets, and by the occupation army that stormed the mosque amid heavy gunfire at those moments.”
The massacre resulted in the death of 29 worshipers and the injury of 129 others, while Goldstein was found dead in one of the western corners of the mosque. The police believed that he had shot himself, but it was later revealed that he had been beaten with an iron rod, which led to his death.
This was not Goldstein’s first attack on worshipers. He committed many other crimes at frequent intervals without the occupation army intervening to deter or arrest him. He had previously thrown firebombs on worshipers’ mats, and he would bring pins and spray them in their path, knocking many of them down.
reactions
Goldstein was buried in the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in the Kiryat Arba settlement, after the authorities refused to bury him in the Jewish cemetery in Hebron.
His grave became a shrine to the Israeli extreme right, and received about 10,000 people, but by 2000 the Supreme Court ordered the removal of the shrine-like shrine, and the police implemented the court’s decision.
Some extremists praised Goldstein and tried to justify his actions based on Jewish law, but he was harshly attacked by the rabbinical establishment.
The mosque was closed after the massacre for about 6 months, then half of it was allocated to settlers, and electronic gates were erected at its doors to limit the access of worshipers.
Israeli soldiers opened fire during the funeral of the martyrs in the massacre, raising the number of victims to 50 martyrs and 150 wounded.
The UN Security Council condemned this massacre on March 18, 1994, and called for measures to protect the Palestinians, including the disarmament of the settlers.
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), carried out 5 martyrdom operations between April and December 1994, in which 36 Israelis were killed and more than a hundred others were wounded.
