The World Confronts its Malaise

The world is in shock; stricken by the realization that mass murder occurs unimpeded and those who were regarded as protectors against atrocities are those who enable the slaughter of innocents. An uneasiness has gripped the world and brought it to the depressing state of watching helplessly as democratically chosen leaders aid and abet in the most severe criminal activity ─ genocide. Israel has achieved a level of committing atrocities, denying humanity, and displaying insanity that is incomprehensible. Go back in history and return to Hulegu, prince of the Mongol Empire, besieging Baghdad in the thirteenth century. “Surrender and give in to your new authority or all will die,” Hulegu shouted to those behind city walls. Benjamin Netanyahu can be paraphrased as uttering a similar threat to the Palestinians, with one difference; “Even if you remain passive to our dictates after surrender, your community will eventually perish; assistance by Western nations assures us of that.”

Destruction of the Palestinian community has been ongoing, starting in late 1947 and accelerating in contemporary times. The horrors inflicted upon the Palestinians have been obscured and nonchalantly received by Western governments. One event tells the story, serving as a catalyst for additional atrocities that have intensified. Details of that event expose the malaise that fails to understand how the Zionists deceitfully use the damage they inflict upon others to gain advantage. This deceit continues with similar events in the present and predicts a future of chaos for the Middle East. The moment missed has led to a future soon to be missing.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, entered the Ibrahami mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron. Using an automatic weapon, Goldstein indiscriminately killed 29 and wounded 125 of the 800 Palestinian Muslim worshippers participating in the first of the five daily Islamic prayers. On that day, Western leaders should have realized they were dealing with a genocidal Israeli population, that this genocide could not proceed one day further, and failure to halt the drift doomed the Middle East to an endless conflagration that would engulf much of the world.

The fanatical and crazed Baruch Goldstein could not have prepared the act by himself; the calculated manner of presentation and the lack of attention to him carrying a gun and wanting, for no adequate reason, to enter the mosque area, indicate Israeli authorities were complicit in assembling the plans for his attack. Although no longer a doctor in the Israeli military, Goldstein wore his antiquated uniform and “carried a Galil assault rifle and four magazines of ammunition, which held a total of 140 rounds in 35 rounds per magazine.” Events are clouded by observer contradictions and agendas. Tablet magazine has an accepted version (Note:Edited for brevity) that features dubious reasons for inattention to Goldstein’s strange behavior and for not asking sensible questions. The New York Times provided additional facts.

At 5:05 a.m. Feb. 25, 1994, the phone rang in the regional command center of the Israel Defense Forces in Kiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Shlomo Edelstein, the officer in charge, picked up the phone. “He told me to send a jeep within five minutes to the infirmary,” Edelstein recalled, “which seemed really strange to me, because he wasn’t the doctor on call. And even if someone called him directly at home, say, why would he ask for the jeep? If it was a real emergency, wouldn’t he need an ambulance?”

Edelstein called Motti Unger, who drove the community’s emergency vehicle, and asked him to swing by and see what was up. Goldstein just needed a quick ride to the nearby Cave of the Patriarchs, slightly more than a mile away. The ride lasted about seven minutes, not long enough for Unger to ask any questions. He gave Unger his car keys and asked him to drop them off later with his wife.

Unger didn’t find it strange that the doctor was wearing army fatigues, or that he was carrying his Galil automatic rifle. Hebron was a violent place, and attacks on the region’s Jewish residents were getting more and more common. If he needed a quick early morning ride, he probably had his reasons. The soldiers guarding the cave were just as incurious. One of them asked the doctor why he was there so early, and in uniform no less. The doctor smiled and mumbled something about miluim, Hebrew for reserve duty, and walked in. The doctor walked over to the green metal door that connected the room to the much larger Isaac Hall, at the end of which, according to legend, lies the locked door that leads directly to Gan Eden, the Garden of Eden. Normally, the door would’ve been guarded. The doctor unbolted the door and walked in.

He took a few steps along the wall in the marvelous room with the high, arched ceilings and the ornate rugs. And then, he took out his rifle and started shooting. When security forces finally made their way to the scene, they found the bodies of 29 Muslim men, murdered as they prayed peacefully. And in one corner, lying perfectly still, his head bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher wielded by a few of the men who rushed to stop the attack, was doctor Baruch Goldstein.

The New York Times article adds,

Muhammed Abu Saleh, a guard at the mosque door, said that Goldstein had demanded to enter, saying he was the duty officer, and that when Mr. Abu Saleh objected, the doctor knocked him down with the butt of his rifle. “When I saw him, he was running toward the hall where everyone was saying prayers,” said Khatem Kafisha, who had been taking off his shoes near the door. “He could have shot any one of us who was outside, but it was clear he only wanted to open fire on the worshipers so he could hit as many people as possible.”

The aftermath of the atrocity is an example of how the Zionists cleverly use the damage done to others to eventually advance their cause. It compares to changing the student protests against Jewish participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people to student protest as anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish people.

Israeli leaders showed contempt for the atrocity. Yitzhak Rabin addressed the Knesset:

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.

The Israeli government’s words made headlines and impressed a world to believe the Israelis wanted peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians. The same world was unaware that, “in October 1993, after a series of previous disruptions, Goldstein poured acid on prayer rugs in the Ibrahimi Mosque, burned large holes in them, and assaulted six Palestinians worshipers.” Muslim authorities informed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the “dangers” posed by Goldstein. “These daily violations in the Ibrahimi mosque cannot be given silent treatment.” Rabin, who posed as a follower of the Oslo Accords, did not respond to the earlier information. Israeli authorities took no action. Now, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) demanded that all settlers be disarmed and an international force be created to protect Palestinians. The Israeli government only arrested followers of Goldstein’s hero, the deceased Meir Kahane, forbade certain settlers from entering Arab towns, and demanded those settlers, and only those, turn in their army-issued rifles.

This was a moment in which an enraged world community may have been able to thwart the ongoing genocide. Those responsible for the Ibrahim Mosque massacre were the foreign settlers who occupied land stolen from the Palestinians. The illegal occupation of the lands provoked the Palestinians into retaliation against these foreign settlers. The retaliation gave Baruch Goldstein and his deranged followers a deranged reason to commit an atrocity against the Palestinians. The cycle of violence had one principal contributing factor — the settlers occupying stolen land. Stop the illegal settlements and the violence will cease. A moribund world could not commit to appropriate action. A moribund world created a world of eternal victims.

The atrocity did not end at the Ibrahami Mosque. In mass protests by Palestinians throughout the West Bank, 20 to 26 Palestinians were killed while 120 were injured in confrontations with the Israeli military. Nine Israeli Jews were also killed. A naïve world did not notice that actions did not follow words, that the Palestinians did not receive compensation or more protection. The opposite occurred; the Hebron settlers received assistance in expanding their settlements and increasing their violence against the Palestinians.

Israeli measures taken in Hebron following the massacre include:

• A round-the-clock curfew imposed on Palestinian residents.
• Forcible division of the Ibrahimi Mosque to create a separate prayer space for Jews with a separate entrance. In addition, the mosque is opened exclusively for Jews 10 days a year, and Muslims 10 days a year.
• Palestinian shopkeepers on Shuhada Street in the heart of Hebron were forced to close their businesses, which were welded shut by the Israeli army, under the pretext of securing settlers living on the busy commercial artery.
• Palestinians were restricted, at first from driving and later from walking as well, on a large section of Shuhada Street, prompting its nickname of “Apartheid Street.” The US government spent millions of dollars through USAID renovating Shuhada Street prior to its segregation, most of which is now reserved for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers.
• Numerous new Israeli military checkpoints and obstacles to movement were put in place making it difficult for Palestinians to move around the city, including children who must pass through checkpoints to get to school.
• There are over 120 obstacles to Palestinian movement designed to segregate “restricted areas” (settlements and surrounding areas) from the rest of the city, including 18 permanently manned military checkpoints.
• Several streets in the center of downtown Hebron that lead to the settlements are prohibited for Palestinian traffic and some also for pedestrian movement.
• 512 Palestinian businesses in the restricted areas have been closed by the Israeli military and at least 1100 others have closed due to restricted access for customers and suppliers.
• More than 1000 Palestinian homes located in the restricted areas, over 40% of the area’s residences, have been abandoned, according to a survey by B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.