1. Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-Israeli physician and religious extremist who, in 1994, murdered 29 Palestinian people in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an incident of Jewish terrorism.
22 Facts About Baruch Goldstein
1. 2.
In 1983, Baruch 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.
3.
Baruch Goldstein was active in Kahane's Kach party, and was third on the party list for the Knesset during the 1984 elections.
4.
Baruch Goldstein was born on December 9,1956, as Benjamin Baruch Goldstein in Brooklyn, New York, to an Orthodox Jewish family.
5.
Baruch Goldstein attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush religious day school.
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Baruch Goldstein studied medicine at Yeshiva University, receiving a medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
7.
Baruch Goldstein belonged to the Jewish Defense League, a militant Jewish organization founded by his boyhood acquaintance Meir Kahane.
8.
Baruch Goldstein served as a physician in the Israel Defense Forces, first as a conscript, then in the reserve forces.
9.
Baruch Goldstein changed his name from Benjamin to Baruch, married a Soviet immigrant named Miriam, and had four children.
10.
Israeli press reports claimed that Baruch Goldstein refused to treat Arabs, even Arab soldiers serving in the IDF, believing it was against Jewish laws to treat non-Jews even for payment.
11.
Baruch Goldstein was active in Kahane's Kach party, and was third on the party list for the Knesset during the 1984 elections.
12.
Baruch Goldstein compared Israel's democracy to the Nazi regime, and often wore a yellow star with the word JUDE on it.
13.
On February 25,1994, that year's Purim day, Baruch Goldstein entered a room in the Cave of the Patriarchs that was serving as a mosque, wearing an Israeli army uniform "with the insignia of rank, creating the image of a reserve officer on active duty".
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Baruch Goldstein then opened fire, killing 29 worshippers and wounding more than 125.
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Mosque guard Mohammad Suleiman Abu Saleh said he thought that Baruch Goldstein was trying to kill as many people as possible, and described how there were "bodies and blood everywhere".
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Baruch Goldstein was immediately "denounced with shocked horror even by the mainstream Orthodox", and many in Israel classified Baruch Goldstein as insane.
17.
Israeli military authorities refused to allow Baruch Goldstein to be buried in the Jewish cemetery in Hebron.
18.
Baruch Goldstein was buried opposite the Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement adjacent to Hebron.
19.
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".
20.
Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba declared that Baruch Goldstein was "holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust".
21.
The phenomenon of the veneration of Baruch Goldstein's tomb persisted for years.
22.
Baruch Goldstein aimed at terrorists' heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets, and shot, and shot.