Baruch Kopel Goldstein (Hebrew: ברוך קופל גולדשטיין‎; December 9, 1956 – February 25, 1994) was an American-born Israeli physician and mass murderer who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, killing 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers and wounding another 125.

The Israeli government condemned the massacre and responded by arresting followers of Meir Kahane, forbidding certain settlers from entering Arab towns and demanding that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles. Goldstein was denounced by mainstream Orthodox Judaism and was widely described as insane by Israelis.

Goldstein's gravesite became a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists. In 1999, after the passing of Israeli legislation outlawing monuments to terrorists, the Israeli army dismantled the shrine that had been built to Goldstein at the site of his interment.

Early life and education

Goldstein was born in Brooklyn, New York to an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush religious day school and Yeshiva University. He received his medical training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He belonged to the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a militant Jewish organization founded by his boyhood acquaintance Meir Kahane.

Immigration to Israel

Goldstein immigrated to Israel in 1983. He served as a physician in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), first as a conscript, then in the reserve forces. Following the end of his active duty, Goldstein worked as a physician and lived in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron, where he worked as an emergency doctor, and was involved in treating victims of Arab-Israeli violence. Israeli press reports stated that Goldstein refused to treat Arabs, even Arab soldiers serving in the IDF; this was also reflected in comments by his acquaintances,although there was one account of him treating a wounded Palestinian. Goldstein was active in Kahane's Kach party and was third on the party list for the Knesset during the 1984 elections. He compared Israel's democracy to Germany under Nazism, and was in the habit of wearing a yellow star with the word Jude on it.

Massacre

On February 25, 1994, that year's Purim day, Goldstein entered a room in the Cave of the Patriarchs that was serving as a mosque, wearing "his army uniform with the insignia of rank, creating the image of a reserve officer on active duty." He then opened fire, killing 29 worshippers 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". Eventually, Goldstein was overcome and beaten to death by survivors of the massacre. According to Ian Lustick, "by mowing down Arabs he believed wanted to kill Jews, Goldstein was reenacting part of the Purim story."

Palestinian protests immediately followed the shooting; in the following week, 25 Palestinians were killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and five Israelis were killed as well. According to Aditi Bhaduri, writing in The Hindu, following the riots, Israel imposed a two-week curfew on the 120,000 Palestinian residents of Hebron. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telephoned PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and described the attack as a "loathsome, criminal act of murder". The Israeli government condemned the massacre, and responded by arresting followers of Meir Kahane, forbidding certain settlers from entering Arab towns, and demanding that those settlers turn in their army-issued rifles. Goldstein was immediately "denounced with shocked horror even by the mainstream Orthodox", and most in Israel classified Goldstein as insane.

Gravesite and shrine

Goldstein's tomb.

Goldstein is buried across from the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement adjacent to Hebron. The park is named in memory of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Israeli far-right political party Kach, a group classified by the United States and Israeli governments as a terrorist organization. Goldstein was a long-time devotee of Kahane.

The gravesite has become a pilgrimage site for Jewish 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 least 10,000 people have visited the grave since the massacre. In 1996, members of the Labor Party called for the shrine-like landscaped prayer area near the grave to be removed, and Israeli security officials expressed concern that the grave would encourage extremists. In 1999, following passage of a law designed to prohibit monuments to terrorists, and an associated Supreme Court ruling, the Israeli Army bulldozed the shrine and prayer area set up near Goldstein's grave.

Veneration of Goldstein and celebration of the massacre

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 contrast, mainstream Jewish religious leaders "rejected the suggestion that killing Palestinians with an automatic rifle" was authorized by the Torah.

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 [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".

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 dismantled 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.

In 2010, Jewish settlers were criticized that during celebrations of Purim they sang songs praising Baruch Goldstein's massacre demonstratively in front of their Arab neighbours. A phrase from the song reads "Dr. Goldstein, there is none other like you in the world. Dr. Goldstein, we all love you… he aimed at terrorists' heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets, and shot, and shot."