Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, 23 years on
Qods International News Agency,
2017/10/06
[minor spelling mistakes corrected and
Baruch Goldstein-image added by
Radio Islam]
On the 25th of February, 1994, as hundreds of Muslim worshipers
were performing the dawn prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque in
downtown al-Khalil ('Hebron'), a Jewish-American terrorist by
the name of Baruch Goldstein descended onto the mosque from the
nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba, spraying the worshipers with
machinegun bullets, killing at least 29 people and injuring many
others.
The terrorist, who used his army-issued Galil rifle, wanted to
kill as many innocent people as possible in order to create mass
terror throughout the city, the largest in the West Bank. His
motive was to thoroughly terrorize the Arabs, who constitute
99.5% of the city's population.
The Israeli occupation authorities, who had to tackle a public
relations disaster, denied any complicity or collusion with the
perpetrator.
Israeli officials, including then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
claimed the massacre was thunder on a clear day. However, it was
hard to believe that the terrorist could not have reached the
heavily-protected premises of the huge compound without some
connivance with the strong Israeli army garrison at the site.
Goldstein himself was eventually overpowered and killed by
survivors, fearing he would still kill more worshipers. Many
settler leaders had the audacity to demand the arrest and
prosecution of those responsible for Goldstein's death.
Many Jewish religious leaders praised the mass murderer, calling
him a great saint and hero. Eventually, a monument perpetuating
his memory was erected in Kiryat Arba and Jewish pilgrims from
as far as California came to pay their respects to and be
blessed by the tomb.
Goldstein was also eulogized by many rabbis and Torah sages who
heaped praise on him, arguing that a thousand Gentile or Goyim
were not worth a Jew's fingernail.
One rabbi, when asked about the religious admissibility of
murdering innocent non-Jewish people, said he was not only sorry
about the death of innocent Arabs but that he was also sorry
about the death of innocent flies!!!
Following the bloodbath, the Israeli government carried out a
huge public relations campaign aimed at convincing western
especially American public opinion that the Israeli government
played no part in the carnage.
Israeli officials argued that Israel and most Jews were dismayed
by the criminal act as much as anyone else.
However, polls in Israel and abroad showed that a majority of
Jews, including Israeli high school students, enthusiastically
supported the evil deed. Moreover, subsequent measures taken
against the Palestinians as well as the excessive leniency
toward settlers, who hailed the massacre, suggested the
government was indifferent toward the massacre and behaved as if
the lives of non-Jews were worthless.
No thunder on clear day
The claim that the massacre surprised the Israeli government was
too fabulous and disingenuous to be believed. In truth, the
massacre was preceded by a poisoned campaign of incitement
against the Palestinians by Talmudic circles.
Goldstein was affiliated with the religious Zionist school of
thought as taught by Abraham Kook.
According to the authors of "Jewish
Fundamentalism in Israel," Israel Shahak and Norton
Mezvinsky (Pluto Press, 1999), Kook is quoted as saying that
"the differences between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews
-all of them in all different levels- is greater and deeper than
the differences between a human soul and the souls of cattle."
And, according to some Torah sages, the difference between Jews
and Gentiles is not religious or political. It is rather racial,
genetic, and scientifically unalterable.
One group is at its very root and by its very nature "totally
evil." While the other is "totally good." Some rabbinic circles
with which the killer Goldstein was closely affiliated would
quote heavily from the Talmud and Old Testament, justifying
genocidal treatment of non-Jews in general and Palestinians in
particular.
Goldstein was a follower of the manifestly racist rabbi Meir
Kahane, who believed in the necessity of ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. In
1978, he wrote a book entitled "They Must Go." Fourteen years
later, following a speech in a New York City hotel, in which he
called for uprooting all Palestinians from Palestine-Israel,
Kahane was assassinated.
Today, 18 years later, While Goldstein himself no longer exists,
"Goldsteinism", e.g. anti-Palestinian hatred and vindictiveness,
is alive and well among the settlers.
A few years ago, Daniella Weiss, a settler leader, visited
Hebron to encourage settler squatters, who had taken over an
Arab property in the city, to resist government efforts to
vacate them.
Weiss, a former mayor of a northern West Bank settlement, quoted
extensively from the Old Testament verses urging the ancient
Israelites to slaughter every man, woman and child and not leave
a breathing thing. According to Weiss, "this is the only way to
deal with the Arabs."
Following the massacre, the Israeli occupation army put, all of
Hebron, the Arabs, not the settlers, under the harshest and
longest curfew ever imposed since the onset of the occupation in
1967.
So cruel was it that several residents succumbed to their
illness because they were denied access to local hospitals.
Israeli officials argued rather dishonestly that the curfew was
justified by "the security situation." However, it was clear, at
least from the Palestinian view point that the main purpose
behind the extended lockdown was to push as many Palestinians in
the Old Town as possible to leave their homes in order to
facilitate the coveted takeover of these homes by Jewish
settlers.
Needless to say, these fears and suspicions have since been
validated and thoroughly vindicated.
The Shamgar commission, a board of inquiry appointed by the
Israeli government to investigate the circumstances surrounding
the massacre, concluded that the Israeli occupation authorities
had consistently failed to investigate let alone prosecute
crimes committed by settlers against Palestinians.
But perhaps it was a local military commander Noam Tivon who
said it most honestly when he told the Israeli newspaper
Ha'aretz: "Let there be no mistake about it. I am not from the
U.N., I am from the IDF and I didn't come here to seek people to
drink tea with, but first of all to ensure the security of the
Jewish settlers."
It is probably safe to say that the overall situation in Hebron
as well the rest of the occupied territories is very much
similar to what was the situation on the eve of the Ibrahimi
mosque massacre 18 years ago.
Jewish terrorists, otherwise called settlers, routinely
vandalize Muslim and to a lesser extent Christian houses of
worship and scrawl racist graffiti on their walls, insulting
religious symbols of both religions,
In addition, the settlers regularly storm the Aqsa Mosque with
heavy protection from the Israeli army and police. This gives
the fanatical settlers a feeling of empowerment, which emboldens
them to commit acts of terror, vandalism, and even murder
against the Palestinians, without risking arrest and prosecution
by an inherently unfair justice system that ipso facto
discriminates against non-Jews.
Had the Ibrahimi Mosque carnage been committed in any other
country, the government would have at the very least vacated the
harmful settlers.
However, far from doing such a step, the Israeli government
actually acted to strengthen the settler presence in Hebron
while doing everything possible to harass the native
Palestinians and push them to leave.
More importantly, the Israeli occupation authorities resorted to
draconian measures against the Palestinians very presence in the
old town. This brings us to the Shuhada Street where Palestinian
traffic and even Palestinian individuals are off limit to the
central thoroughfare which links the Bab El Zawiya district, the
commercial heart of the city, to the eastern and southern
suburbs as well as the neighboring smaller towns such as Yatta
and Dura.
Some of the buildings abutting the street on both sides go back
to the British and Ottoman eras. In recent years, efforts were
made to rehabilitate the street. However, Jewish settlers fought
the project, breaking street lights and the paving stones, as
well as hurling stones at the workers.
Today Shuhada Street is a ghost scene. Only Israeli settlers,
soldiers and foreign tourists are allowed to access it. And what
they see is anti-Arab graffiti sprayed or scrawled across the
streets. Some of this graffiti is particularly ugly, such as
"kill the Arabs" and "Arabs to the gas chambers."
More bizarre are the metal mesh cages that enclose the balconies
of houses where Palestinians continue to live. For these
Palestinians to exit their homes -the Israelis have bolted their
outside doors- they have to use dangerous ladders, or crawl out
the windows in the back of their apartments and go from roof to
roof.
Needless to say, the impact of all this harassment is calculated
by both the settlers and the Israeli political-security
establishment to make the daily life of Palestinians living in
Old Hebron, especially along Shuhada Street, an enduring
nightmare. And it has.
