M I D - E A S T  R E A L I T I E S - SHAHAK ON THE CULT OF GOLDSTEIN

Foreword: Perhaps the most shocking and also significant Jewish phenomena (since it is by no means limited to Israel) is the growing worship of the Nazi-like mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein as a saint. It should be added that the protests against this worship are practically limited to secular Jews. No rabbi of any note, whether in Israel or outside it, even in Reform movement or among the rabbis who are represented as supporting Palestinian rights to some extent, has said a word about this Nazi-like worship. The New York Times and other U.S. media that spend literally acres of space on describing what they call Muslim fundamentalism have, so far as I know, not devoted a single article to describe the worship of Goldstein, although much of the financial support of this worship comes from the U.S., especially from New York. Let me emphasize that the local worship of the mass-murderer by the Jewish settlers of Hebron and Kiryat Arba is much less important than the world-wide support of this form of Jewish Nazism by the Jews resident in other places. It is this support which caused the cowardly Labor-Meretz government to support this worship, at least tacitly.

One day after the magnificent Bar Mitzvah celebration of the son of Baruch Goldstein, the assassin in the Patriarchs' Cave, a tumult broke out in the Knesset. As we know, some of the invited guests glorified the father of the Bar Mitzvah boy at his party and praised the massacre. So did, more than all others, the rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Dov Lior, who told the boy, "Follow the footsteps of your father. He was a righteous man and a great Jewish hero". The reports of the Bar Mitzvah were followed by a vehement condemnation in the Knesset.

"It is clear that Goldstein was not alone" said MK Dedi Zuker (Meretz) yesterday. "He came from the hotbed that cultivated him, and that refuses to dissociate itself from him. The hotbed wants to let his roots grow. These people did not learn anything and they do not intend to forget anything". Yossi Sarid asked the Attorney General to suspend immediately Rabbi Lior from his post. Sarid demanded also that an investigation be opened against Rabbi Lior on a charge of incitement. "Sometimes we are shocked to see Hamas and Jihad activists holding ceremonies of solidarity with assassins, but now we see that the same happens among us", he said. "The same Hamas, the same murder and the same solidarity".

MK Dalia Itzik (Labor) also referred to the Goldstein tomb that attracts so many pious admirers, "The Attorney General, the State Comptroller and the Police must cooperate immediately in order to transfer this tomb from its place and to remove the shame from the Israeli public".

Many right wing Mks have also condemned the expressions of sympathy for the killer. Even MK Benny Allon of the extreme right faction Moledet said, "I can understand those of Goldstein's community, who admired him as a devoted doctor, but I am not prepared to evade the moral debt that rests on all of us. I will do everything to prevent this murderer from becoming, God forbid, an object of imitation. We must condemn the terrible act of murder committed by him".

But in contrast to the Knesset, in Kiryat Arba it was hard to find any person who is shocked by the declarations in praise of the assassin. The anger of the inhabitants turned only against the government, the secular public, Arabs and especially against the Israeli media. The media reports about the intention to limit the size of the Goldsein monument caused an unroar in the community. "In Israel they have started to persecute the dead", the settlers said angrily. Zipi Livni, Miriam Goldstein's friend (widow of Baruch Goldstein) dismissed the newspaper headlines. "All reports are an invention, a fruit of the fertile fantasy of the media", she said. "The things were said in a different spirit. Baruch Goldstein was an especially good man in his life and nobody can take this from him". "Dr. Goldstein was a righteous man, a saint", said an inhabitant of Kiryat Arba. "If the event that the media calls a massacre had not taken place, he would have been praised by all the Jews. That is what Rabbi Lior said to the boy".

"Here are all the signs of turning Baruch Goldstein into a myth", said Dr. David Gurevitz, an expert on culture and myths at the end of the 20th century. "The center of the myth is a ‘holy site' serving as a place for pilgrimage like Baruch Goldstein's tomb, symbolizing what Goldstein stood for. The myth of Baruch Goldstein might cause attacks on Arabs", Gurevitz warns. "The evacuation of Hebron gives the Jewish settlers a feeling that the end of the world is near. In such a situation, following Goldstein's footsteps could be considered as a good thing by them. For the people who believe it, the myth is an ideological assumption holding them together. It enables them to build a fortified wall against ‘the hostile world'. When you turn a massacre into a model and if Goldstein is presented as a sacred representative of truth on earth, there is no reason not to go his way. When Hebron is evacuated, the myth of Baruch Goldstein might grow and kindle even greater fire than Goldstein did".

Products of the Goldstein Industry.

– Adorned prayer book – "for the spiritual exaltation of the Saint Rabbi Baruch Kapel Goldstein, blessed be the memory of the righteous, may God revenge his blood, who was murdered as a martyr". The prayer book is printed on a high quality paper and contains chapters from Psalms and the Kaddish prayer for the dead, to be said by worshipers.

– Key holder – distributed in thousands of copies for 10 shekel each. Made of transparent plastic. On one side of it Goldstein is depicted on the background of the Patriarchs' Cave.

– Shirts with his portrait – popular among extreme Yeshiva students. Can also be seen in extreme right wing demonstrations.

– "Baruch Wine" – Thousands of bottles were sold by "Kach" activists. The bottles show a picture of the assassin wearing a yellow patch. The label states "this is a selected wine 6with 29 points", a subtle hint to the number of the praying Moslems murdered by him. Such a bottle is also prominently kept in the office of the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Rabbi Nissim Ze'ev of Shas, who said, "This wine is not forbidden and I will not throw it out".

– "Baruch the Man", a voluminous book published a year after the murder. It presents, with the help of many rabbis, a portrait of the assassin, who is praised as a righteous saint. The book was edited by Michael Ben Horin. The first edition, 6000 copies, was snapped up on the first day.

– "Baruch the Man: Five General Religious Commands which may be learned from the Holy Act of Saint Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, may God revenge His Blood", booklet written by Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, head of Yoseph's Tomb Yeshiva in Nablus. Ginsburg explains that the commands that motivated Goldstein are: martyrdom, extermination of evil, revenge, saving Jewish lives and just war. "The commands demonstrate a holy act originating from supreme mercy." All copies of the booklet were snapped up.

February 25, 1994, Friday about 5 a.m. Baruch Goldstein, a physician from Kiryat Arba, entered the Patriarchs' Cave where Moslems were praying. He waited until they knelt down, turning to Mecca, and opened fire. 188 bullets fired in long volleys kill 29 Arabs and wound 125. The crowd assaults Goldstein and kills him. Besides the protest and vehement condemnations, the assassin aroused, almost from the first day, sympathy and admiration which became eventually stronger. March 1994. After the massacre, Goldstein's tomb in Kiryat Arba became a place of attraction for religious Jews. At night they come to pray near it. Children arriving at he place say, "He is God's deputy; an angel waiting for him in heaven took him by his hands and said, ‘You did something good. We were waiting for you here'". The children are laying flowers and memorial candles at the grave. Levinger's right hand man, Nahum Hoss, admits that he prays almost every morning at Goldstein's tomb. He says that a permanent group of 30-40 pious Jews hold every night a prayer on the grave. Childless women come there to pray for a birth of male infant. Rabbi Lior of Kiryat Arba writes to the head of Har Etsion Yeshiva, "Baruch Goldstein, may God revenge his blood, was lynched by non-Jews in the Patriarch's Cave. A Jew killed because he is a Jew must be considered as a saint like the Jewish martyrs of the Holocaust".

April 1994. Posters in memory of the assassin are distributed in Haifa: "Mourning and in pain because of the death of the Sacred Rabbi Doctor Baruch Goldstein, may God revenge his blood, who went into heaven". Aid funds in the name of Goldstein appear in Israel and abroad.

October 1994. Extremist elements start erecting a concrete memorial around Goldstein's tomb with the aim of turning it into a place of pilgrimage. The costs, some 80,000 Shekel, were raised from private donations.

November 1994. The Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria issues an order to demolish the gigantic monument that had been already erected around Goldstein's tomb, in the form of a magnificent square of marble. The official reason: Excessive construction. Few days later demolition order is changed into an order to stop the work.

January 1995. Goldstein's relatives and friends pave a path of marble leading to the tomb, at the cost of tens of thousands of shekels. Two stone arches are built near the grave, with holy books dedicated to "Baruch Goldstein the Saint" inside them.

February 1995. Toward the anniversary of the murder, a memorial ceremony is organized in Kiryat Arba. "Kach" and "Kahana Hai" activists celebrated Purim on the tomb, by drinking liquor and extolling what they called "the Purim Miracle of the Year 5754".

May 1995. A medical report written by Goldstein was sold for $1500 to an extremist Jew from the U.S.