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Goldstein was born in Brooklyn, New York to an
Orthodox Jewish family. He attended the Yeshivah 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 Rabbi Meir
Kahane.
After emigrating to Israel, he served as a physician
in the Israeli Defense Force, 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 Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, where he
served as an emergency doctor.
In the autumn of 1993, in recognition of his medical
work, Goldstein received two citations from the Israeli Army. In January
1994, Major Dr Yitzchak Ashkenazi, the local medical officer of the
district of Judea and Samaria recommended Goldstein for promotion to the
rank of Major in the Israeli Army.
Cave of
the Patriarchs massacre
On February 25, 1994, that year's Purim day,
Goldstein entered a room in the Cave of the Patriarchs serving as a
mosque, wearing "his army uniform with the insignia of rank, creating
the image of a reserve officer on active duty" (Shamgar report). He then
opened fire, killing 29 people and wounding 150 (A Time magazine
article reported that Israeli officials counted 39 killed and
Palestinians reported 52 killed).
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." After being
subdued with a fire extinguisher and disarmed, Goldstein was beaten to
death. 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, leading in the following week to the deaths of 25 Palestinians
and five Israelis.
According to Aditi Bhaduri, writing in The Hindu,
following the massacre, Israel imposed a two-week curfew on the 120,000
Palestinian residents of the city, while the 400 Jewish settlers
remained free to move around.
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.
Treatment of non-Jews
Israeli press reports stated that Goldstein refused
to treat non-Jews, even those serving in the IDF, and this was reflected
in comments by his acquaintances.
Gravesite and shrine
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 those
with extreme right-wing political views; 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."
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.