Baruch Goldstein

Baruch Kopel Goldstein (Hebrew: ברוך קאפל גולדשטיין; born Benjamin Carl Goldstein; December 9, 1956 – February 25, 1994) was an American-Israeli mass murderer, religious extremist, and physician who perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an incident of Jewish terrorism. Goldstein was a supporter of Kach, a religious Zionist party that the United States, the European Union and other countries designate as a terrorist organization. Born in 1956 in Brooklyn, New York, to an Orthodox Jewish family, Goldstein received his education there, starting with Jewish scripture studies, and eventually studying medicine at Yeshiva University. In the United States, he was a member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a militant Jewish organization founded by his boyhood acquaintance Meir Kahane. In 1983, Goldstein immigrated to Israel, and served as a physician in the Israeli military, during which he refused to treat Arabs, including those serving as soldiers. Later, he worked as a physician, and lived in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Goldstein was active in Kahane's Kach party, and was third on the party list for the Knesset during the 1984 elections. On February 25, 1994, Goldstein dressed in an Israeli military uniform, entered a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs and opened fire on the 800 Palestinian Muslim worshippers praying there during the month of Ramadan, killing 29 and wounding 125 worshippers, until he was beaten to death by survivors. Goldstein's gravesite became a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists. The following words are inscribed on the tomb: "He 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. The tombstone and its epitaph, calling Goldstein a martyr with clean hands and a pure heart, was left untouched. After the flagstones around it were pried away under the eye of a military chaplain, the ground was covered with gravel.