Religious Violence 81

On Friday morning, February 25, 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein , a resident of the Jewish town of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron , entered the Isaac Hall in the Tomb of the Patriarchs (known as the Ibrahimi Mosque ), where the Muslim Ramadan service was taking place. Wearing his army reservist’s uniform with its captain’s bars, he was neither stopped nor suspected, even by the Arabs at prayer. Positioning himself behind the con­gregation, he raised his Galil assault rifle and emptied four mag­azines into the backs of the worshipers, killing twenty-nine and wounding perhaps twice as many before he was overpowered and killed by some of the Arabs .

Only at first sight was this appalling massacre the act of a single person. It is true that Baruch Goldstein carried out his murderous rampage alone, but he would not have committed twenty-nine murders without ideological and social backing. Goldstein , a physician who violated the Hippocratic Oath and shot down defenseless worshipers in a holy shrine, was nurtured by a warped and distorted faith that many shared with him.

We all think we know where this poison came from. Gold­ stein was a fervent supporter of the late Meir Kahane . He absorbed his mentors racist doctrines, which pretend to be derived from halakhic sources, and put them into practice.

In Kahane ’s book, Know Your Judaism(in Truth ), he could find the following rabbinic aphorisms:“Only non-Jews are cruel” (Maimonides , Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:2);“You [Israel ] are called‘human’; but non-Jews are not called human” (BT Bava Metzia 104); and““You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen’(Lev. 19:18)—but you may take vengeance or bear a grudge against a non-Jew”(Sifra ad loc.). Kahane ’s book presents these and other passages, twisted out of context, as God -given imperatives. It is no wonder that the disciple carried out his master’s dictates.

Nevertheless, the massacre would not have taken place had Goldstein not been able to rely on the support of the milieu in Which he lived—sympathy manifested by the way in which Many residents of Kiryat Arba, including well-known rabbis, Teacted to the massacre. Not only did they refuse to condemn the Murderers actions; some lauded him and called him a“martyr” and a“righteous man.”

The reactions of these residents of the Jewish suburb of the City of the Patriarchs, most of whom are not shackled by