person:baruch goldstein

Remembering the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre
Al Jazeera | by Rich Wiles | 24 Feb 2014
▻https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/02/remembering-ibrahimi-mosque-ma-2014223105915230233.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2014/2/24/201422483534932734_20.jpg

Hebron, occupied Palestinian territories - On February 25 1994, a US-born Israeli military physician walked into the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron armed with a Galil assault rifle. It was early morning during the holy month of Ramadan, and hundreds of Palestinians were crammed inside, bowed in prayer.

Baruch Goldstein, who had emigrated to Israel in 1983, lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement on the outskirts of the city. As worshippers kneeled, Goldstein opened fire. He reloaded at least once, continuing his barrage for as long as possible before finally being overpowered and eventually beaten to death. By the time he was stopped, 29 worshippers were killed, and more than a hundred had been injured.

The Israeli government immediately released a statement condemning the act and stating that Goldstein acted alone and was psychologically disturbed.

Twenty years later, Palestinians are carrying out memorial events and Hebron’s settlers are preparing celebratory pilgrimages to Goldstein’s shrine inside Kiryat Arba.

Muslims and Jews alike believe that the building houses the earthly remains of the religious patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah, and the complex is divided between Jewish and Muslim areas.

The massacre was widely reported in the international media - but many Palestinians here continue believe that the full story has never been told.

The 29 people killed inside the mosque were not the only “martyrs” that day. Locals estimate the final number of deaths at between 50 and 70 - and an estimated 250 were injured over the course of the day. After the initial attack inside the mosque, more Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army during protests outside the mosque, outside Hebron’s Ahli hospital, and even in the local cemetery as the dead were being buried.

Some survivors of the massacre also report that they were shot by a second gunman inside the mosque, and claim that this was a planned attack of which the Israeli military was aware in advance. None here believe the official story of Goldstein acting entirely alone in a fit of madness.

The Israelis ordered 520 businesses to close overnight, and they remain shuttered to this day. Shuhaha Street, the main road through town, was later sealed off.

“The only way to be on this road is to be an Israeli or a foreigner,” said Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher. “For Palestinians, this is a no-go area.” (...)

Kahane returns to the Knesset
Feb 21, 2019 3:36 AM – Haaretz.com
▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/kahane-returns-to-the-knesset-1.6957376

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lust for power knows no limits. The pressure he brought to bear on Habayit Hayehudi and National Union – including a promise of the housing and education ministries, two seats in the security cabinet and a reserved spot on the Likud list for one of their members – bore fruit. Rabbi Rafi Peretz responded to Netanyahu’s call to unite with the Otzma Yehudit party, comprised of followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, which will receive slots No. 5 and No. 8 on the joint ticket.

Thus, under the sponsorship of a prime minister who is prepared to sacrifice every principle and smash every institution in his battle to entrench his regime, the followers of Kahane will return to the Knesset riding like the Messiah on the donkey of religious Zionism.

Kahane’s Kach party, which championed the deportation of the Arabs from all of “Eretz Israel,” was disqualified from contending for Knesset in 1988 because its platform contained racist incitement. It held a Knesset seat from 1984 until 1988. After the massacre by Baruch Goldstein, a Kach activist, at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994, the government declared the Kach and Kahane Chai movements illegal terror organizations. Kach is also on the American and EU lists of terror groups. But none of this matters to Netanyahu, who is determined to win at any price.

Otzma Yehudit is the political home of Kahane’s students and admirers, extreme Arab-haters who believe in Jewish supremacy, among them the founder of the Lehava movement, the radical-right group that opposes personal relationships between Jews and non-Jews. The Kahanists followed the “advice” of the party’s rabbis – Rabbi Dov Lior, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer – who told them to accept the compromise because the fate of the Land of Israel is at stake. (...)

#toujourspire

» Israeli Minister Calls for Expulsion of International Observers from Hebron
IMEMC News - January 22, 2019 4:16 AM
▻http://imemc.org/article/israeli-minister-calls-for-expulsion-of-international-observers-from-hebron

Israel’s Minister of Internal Security, Gilad Erdan, has called for international observers to be expelled from Hebron, claiming the mission is “hostile to Israel rather than a neutral force, and harmful to both the Israeli soldiers stationed in Hebron and the Jewish settlers that live there”.

Erdan sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding that he end the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), sending him a secret police report “with data to back up his assertion”.

The letter read:

“It is no wonder that a force, composed of policemen from a hostile Islamic state such as Turkey and pro-Palestinian countries that sponsor boycotts [of Israel] such as Sweden and Norway, interferes with IDF soldiers and police, creates friction with the settlers, cooperates with radical organizations and promotes the delegitimization of Israel.”

Erdan continued: “It is [therefore] right and proper for the Israeli government to prevent the continued activity of this ‘temporary’ force acting to harm Israel.”

In November, Netanyahu said he would review the mission’s status in December.

The TIPH – a civilian observer mission which has been present in Hebron since 1997 – has a mandate which is renewed every six months by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel. The mission’s current mandate ends in 14 days, which likely explains the timing of Erdan’s appeal. In doing so, he joins the right-wing campaign led by Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotovely, to pressure Netanyahu to end the mission’s mandate. It was formed in the aftermath of a massacre committed by Jewish extremist rabbi, Baruch Goldstein, who killed 30 Palestinian worshippers during their morning prayers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

Explained: How Israel is trying to break Breaking the Silence – and how it could backfire

What happened after a former Israeli soldier confessed he assaulted an unarmed Palestinian

Judy Maltz Nov 21, 2017
read more: ▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.824227

Following a relatively swift investigation, a former Israeli combat soldier was cleared of allegations that he assaulted an unarmed Palestinian during a tour of duty in Hebron.
It might have been cause for celebration, had the soldier not been the one to bring the allegations against himself.
So last week, when the State Prosecutor’s Office alleged that Dean Issacharoff, spokesman of the soldiers’ anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence, had lied about his actions, Israeli right-wing leaders naturally rejoiced.
>> To whitewash occupation, Netanyahu crew casts Breaking the Silence whistle-blower as bogeyman | Opinion
The findings, they claimed, were further evidence of what they have been saying for years – that Breaking the Silence is an organization of liars and traitors bent on defaming the State of Israel and the Israeli army.
skip - IDF soldier accused of accosting Palestinian man

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As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a Facebook post: “Breaking the Silence lies and slanders our soldiers around the world. Today this fact received further proof, if anyone had a doubt. The truth wins out.”
But in the latest twist in a case that has gripped the nation in recent days, Netanyahu’s declaration of victory appears to be premature.
According to brand new evidence, the state prosecutors who pronounced Issacharoff a liar may have been investigating the wrong incident and questioning the wrong victim.

Breaking the Silence spokesman Dean Issacharoff, who confessed in a video to beating up a Palestinian in the West Bank while in the Israeli army.Breaking the Silence
Newly unearthed footage, broadcast on two of Israel’s most popular evening news programs Monday, suggests that the Palestinian whom Issacharoff claims to have assaulted was not the same Palestinian questioned by state investigators.

It also appears that the Palestinian questioned by state investigators, the one who testified that Issacharoff had not assaulted him, had been referring to a completely different incident.
In the clip, filmed three-and-a-half years ago by a Hebron resident employed by another Israeli human rights organization, Issacharoff is seen escorting a handcuffed Palestinian who appears to have bruises on his face. How he received the bruises and the circumstances of his arrest are not clear from the footage.
An account published Tuesday morning in Haaretz by Amira Hass raises further questions about the credibility of the state prosecutors’ findings. In his first interview since the findings were published, Hassan Joulani, the Palestinian questioned by investigators about the incident, said that contrary to what state prosecutors reported, he had indeed been assaulted during his arrest – although by Border Police and not by Issacharoff.
The blows, he said, were received during a separate incident – not the one cited by Issacharoff in the videotaped account that prompted the investigation.
Joulani was arrested and beaten, according to this interview with him, in February 2014, during a demonstration marking the 20th anniversary of the mass murder of Palestinians at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs by settler Baruch Goldstein.
The assault reported by Issacharoff, however, took place after a routine round of stone-throwing.
On one level, it boils down to the simple question of whether or not a former Israeli soldier lied.
On a whole other level, however, the case of Issacharoff raises more fundamental questions about Israel’s 50-year-old occupation and its corrosive effects on society, among them: Who is to blame when soldiers serving among a hostile population in occupied territory act badly – the soldiers or the state that sent them there? Should Israeli soldiers speak out about the atrocities they witness during their service at the risk of tarnishing the image of the state? Can an investigation launched by a right-wing politician who harbors hostility toward anti-occupation organizations – in this case, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked – really be undertaken with neutrality?

Al-Aqsa : sous des prétextes sécuritaires, Israël poursuit son nettoyage ethnique de la Palestine
Diana Buttu - 21 juillet 2017 – Al-Jazeera – Traduction : Chronique de Palestine
▻http://chroniquepalestine.com/al-aqsa-israel-poursuit-nettoyage-ethnique-palestine

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(...) Au nom de sa « sécurité », Israël exproprie les terres palestiniennes. Au nom de sa « sécurité », Israël construit des colonies réservées aux seuls juifs sur des terres palestiniennes volées. Au nom de sa « sécurité », Israël démolit les maisons et les écoles palestiniennes et au nom de sa « sécurité », les Palestiniens sont assiégés à Gaza, forcés de vivre sans électricité, sans service de santé et approvisionnement en d’eau adéquats, et se voient même interdit d’accéder à la mer.

Et, lorsque les Palestiniens sont abattus par des meurtriers de masse, comme ils l’ont été dans les années 1990 à Hébron par Baruch Goldstein, les Palestiniens – et non les Israéliens – sont soumis, toujours au nom de la « sécurité, à des restrictions encore plus sévères dans leurs mouvements. Bref, Israël cherche à faire de Jérusalem un nouvel Hébron : interdits aux Palestiniens, mais avec toutes les facilités pour les juifs israéliens qui prennent le pas sur les droits des Palestiniens.

Alors qu’Israël continue d’abattre les Palestiniens, qui assurera la sécurité des Palestiniens ?

Cette sécurité ne viendra pas du leader palestinien non élu actuel, Mahmoud Abbas, qui s’est promené quatre jours en Chine alors que les Palestiniens sont empêchés d’accéder au complexe d’Al-Aqsa et que les Gazaouis souffrent sous un blocus qu’il a ouvertement soutenu. Ni, bien sûr, ne viendra-t-il d’une communauté internationale silencieuse qui ne sait comment tordre ses mains et condamner Israël dans les termes les plus mesurés.

Au contraire, les Palestiniens continueront à se défendre, et à se défendre courageusement, ne s’inclinant que devant le Dieu qu’ils prient et jamais devant les diktats israéliens.

Jerusalem without Palestinians? - Opinion -

Israel continues to treat peace talks with the Palestinians like a soccer game: There has to be a winner and a loser. Peace as a shared interest has disappeared from Israelis’ emotional and intellectual lexicon

Amira Hass Jul 18, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.802056

Is an Old City of Jerusalem without Palestinians unimaginable? This question couldn’t have been put into words if it were unimaginable. Given the ghost town in Hebron and the hell of besieged Gaza, there’s no choice but to conclude that the dynamics of the perpetuation of the temporary Oslo Accords, combined with the security mythos, might lead to a similar nightmare scenario in Jerusalem.
In Israel, “security” is only for the Jews and their state. The fact that the Palestinians under this state’s rule constantly live without any kind of security – physical, employment-wise, property-wise, emotional or nutritional – is erased from every intelligence assessment and every moral position.
For the sake of the Hebron settlers’ security, Yitzhak Rabin punished the Palestinians with curfews and segregation for the massacre perpetrated on them by Dr. Baruch Goldstein. Fewer Arabs in the streets of Hebron, more security for the Jews. And all those who came after Rabin followed him down this slope toward a ghost town in Hebron.
Israel continues to treat peace talks like a soccer game or a wrestling match: There has to be a winner and a loser. Peace as a shared interest has disappeared from Israelis’ emotional and intellectual lexicon. Ever since 1994, the leaders’ orders and the actions on the ground by the army and the Civil Administration have sent the opposite message: We must beat the Palestinians in negotiations.
And what constitutes victory? No independent Palestinian state as envisioned by the United Nations in its resolutions, and as the Palestinians have agreed to since 1988.
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The separation of the Gaza Strip (since 1991, my friends) from the rest of the Palestinian territory and the separation of East Jerusalem (since 1993, ladies and gentlemen) from both the West Bank and Gaza were ostensibly temporary security measures. But ever since implementation of the Oslo Accords began, Israel has proved that instead of ending these separations, it’s making them worse. These twin separations were the prerequisites for thwarting the UN resolutions.
In the interim battles waged since 1994, the Palestinians have been defeated. In their chronic weakness, they created a duplicate and cumbersome system of limited self-government whose interest in surviving is intertwined with Israel’s interest in continuing the façade of negotiations and what it has produced to date: enclaves of fictitious sovereignty.
Once, negotiations were a means. But as peace became more distant, like the horizon when you walk toward it, negotiations became an end. Now, resuming negotiations is an end. Still, we must remember that despite all these interim surrenders, the Palestinian leadership still hasn’t produced the longed-for signature on the final surrender “agreement.”
This is the reason for the daily arrests, checkpoints, raids, new roads and neighborhoods for settlers, people arrested over Facebook posts, rulings by judges in Jerusalem ousting Palestinians from their homes so Jews can move in, and every few years, the offensives and wars. All these are steps in the negotiations.
Make the situation a little worse and it becomes necessary to hold lengthy interim negotiations on “restoring the status quo ante,” which is never actually restored. Step by step, Israelis hope, they are advancing toward a Palestinian signature on a surrender.
Today, metal detectors are a security measure, ostensibly a necessary one. Ostensibly this has no connection to other steps – bureaucratic, planning, legal, administrative – that Israel has systematically taken to dismantle East Jerusalem as a Palestinian city and the capital of the State of Palestine.
With the dexterity of white-collar crime suspects and the smugness of high-class pimps, Israeli representatives turn the violent reality on its head: Israel is the one defending itself, the Palestinians are the attackers. This lets Israel make its aggressive policies toward them even harsher – gradually but constantly, ostensibly in response.
Security for Jews only, perpetual negotiations, separation and siege until the Palestinians surrender, Palestinian weakness – all the elements that made Gaza and Hebron possible also exist in Jerusalem. The pan-Muslim Al-Aqsa Mosque saves us from a full Hebronization. But not from all the steps along the way.

Richard Gere compare Hébron à la ségrégation dans le ’vieux Sud’ des États-Unis
Times of Israel Staff 24 mars 2017, 13:17
▻http://fr.timesofisrael.com/richard-gere-compare-hebron-a-la-segregation-dans-le-vieux-sud-des

http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/uploads/2017/03/Gere-21-635x357.jpg

(...) Des guides de Breaking the Silence ont déambulé avec Gere le long de la rue Shuhada, l’ancienne rue principale et pôle commercial de Hébron. Les magasins arabes de la rue ont fermé leurs portes lors des émeutes de 1994 qui avaient été déclenchées par le massacre du Tombeau des Patriarches, au cours duquel un habitant israélien Baruch Goldstein avait tué 29 Palestiniens. La rue a été fermée à la circulation palestinienne durant la deuxième intifada.

En comparant la rue, aujourd’hui interdite aux Palestiniens, aux photos de cette artère commerciale vibrante au début des années 1990, la star hollywoodienne a déclaré que la situation ressemblait à la ségrégation raciale qui avait préparé l’éclosion du mouvement pour les droits civils.

« C’est exactement ce qu’était le ‘vieux Sud’ en Amérique. Les Noirs savaient où ils pouvaient aller », a-t-il indiqué à ses guides.

« Ils ne pouvaient pas boire à telle fontaine, ils ne pouvaient pas aller là ou là, ils ne pouvaient pas manger à tel endroit. Et c’était bien assimilé – vous ne franchissiez pas la limite si vous ne vouliez pas vous faire frapper à la tête ou être lynché ».

Il a également expliqué avoir été frappé par l’étrangeté de la situation.

« C’est quelque chose qui me rend fou, là… C’est vraiment bizarre et véritablement étrange », a-t-il dit. « Qui est propriétaire de la ville et ce sentiment de ‘je suis protégé, je peux faire tout ce que je veux’ ».

Après le passage d’une voiture appartenant à un Israélien et circulant à grande vitesse, Gere a comparé la scène entière au film futuriste ‘Mad Max’, qui décrit l’effondrement d’une société. Il a également ajouté que « c’est une énergie qui est vraiment lugubre… C’est comme un vieux film de cow-boy ou quelque chose dans le genre ». (...)

Le boycott d’Israël n’est pas de l’antisémitisme
Eric Hazan, Libération, le 4 mai 2016
►http://www.liberation.fr/debats/2016/05/04/le-boycott-d-israel-n-est-pas-de-l-antisemitisme_1450552

#Palestine #France #BDS #boycott #Eric_Hazan

Israeli Terrorists, Born in the U.S.A. - The New York Times
By SARA YAEL HIRSCHHORNSEPT. 4, 2015

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/israeli-terrorists-born-in-the-usa.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

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Jerusalem — ON July 31, in the West Bank village of Duma, 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned alive in a fire. All available evidence suggests that the blaze was a deliberate act of settler terrorism. More disturbingly, several of the alleged instigators, currently being detained indefinitely, are not native-born Israelis — they have American roots.

But there has been little outcry in their communities. Settler rabbis and the leaders of American immigrant communities in the West Bank have either played down their crime or offered muted criticism.

It’s worth recalling the response of the former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to another heinous attack two decades ago, when an American-born doctor, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down dozens of Palestinians while they prayed in Hebron.

“He grew in a swamp whose murderous sources are found here, and across the sea; they are foreign to Judaism, they are not ours,” thundered Mr. Rabin before the Knesset in February 1994. “You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out.”

The shocking 1994 massacre was, at the time, the bloodiest outbreak of settler terrorism Israelis and Palestinians had ever seen. Less than two years later, Mr. Rabin himself would be dead, felled by an ultranationalist assassin’s bullet.

Suddenly, a group of American Jewish immigrants that had existed on the fringes of society became a national pariah. A former president of Israel, Chaim Herzog, labeled the United States “a breeding ground” for Jewish terror; the daily newspaper Maariv castigated American Jews who “send their lunatic children to Israel.” One Israeli journalist even demanded “operative steps against the Goldsteins of tomorrow” by banning the immigration of militant American Jews.

But tomorrow has arrived.

After years of impunity for settlers who commit violent crimes, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, has now supposedly cracked down by rounding up a grand total of four youths believed to be connected to recent acts of settler terrorism — three of whom trace their origins to the United States.

The agency’s “most wanted” Jewish extremist is 24-year-old Meir Ettinger, who has an august pedigree in racist and violent circles. He is a grandson of Meir Kahane, a radical American rabbi who in 1971 immigrated to Israel, established the Kach party and served as its lone Knesset member until it was banned in 1988. (Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990, but his career laid the groundwork for ultranationalist and antidemocratic parties in Israel.)

Another is Mordechai Meyer, 18, from the settlement of Maale Adumim outside Jerusalem. He is the son of American immigrants who claimed he simply wanted to study the Torah and have an adventure in the West Bank. Another American settler, Ephraim Khantsis, was detained for threatening Shin Bet agents in court. The fourth, Eviatar Slonim, is the child of Australian Jews.

Mr. Ettinger, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Khantsis join a long list of settler extremists with American roots. A Brooklyn-born settler, Era Rapaport, played a prominent role in the car-bombing of the mayor of Nablus in 1980. In 1982, a Baltimore transplant, Alan Goodman, opened fire at the Dome of the Rock, killing two Palestinians and wounding 11. That same year, a former Brooklynite, Yoel Lerner, was jailed for leading a movement to overthrow the Israeli government and blow up the Temple Mount.

These days, rabbis like the St. Louis-born Yitzhak Ginsburg, who heads a yeshiva in the radical settlement of Yizhar, are inculcating the next generation.

Today, according to American government sources and several other studies, an estimated 12 to 15 percent of settlers (approximately 60,000 people) hail from the United States. This disproportionately large American contingent — relative to the total number of American-Israelis — has joined secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox Israelis, and other more recent immigrants. Few of them live in extremist hilltop outposts; a majority live in suburbanized settlements near Jerusalem, but they are considered among the most highly ideological.

RATHER than quoting the Bible or rhapsodizing about a messianic vision, they tend to describe their activities in the language of American values and idealism — as an opportunity to defend human rights and live in the “whole land of Israel” — often over a cup of Starbucks coffee in their boxy aluminum prefab houses or in the mansions of settlement suburbia. To them, living in the West Bank is pioneering on the new frontier; it’s merely an inconvenience that they’re often staking their claims on private Palestinian land. And for a fanatical fringe among them, this Wild West analogy has extended to indiscriminate violence.

Ayelet Waldman evokes ’shame’ of Hebron in major U.S. magazine - By Haaretz | Jun. 12, 2014 |
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.598528

Ayelet Waldman, a well-known Israel-born, American Jewish novelist, published a scathing attack on Israel’s policy toward Palestinians in the prestigious U.S. magazine The Atlantic on Thursday.

Describing her tour of Hebron late last month, which was led by Israeli soldiers from the anti-occupation NGO Breaking the Silence, Waldman writes of visiting Shuhada Street, which is effectively off-limits to Palestinians, and fearing for the lives of a few Palestinian boys daring to enter the street.

“I watched these Shuhada Street boys risk death for the sake of a liberty so rudimentary and fundamental that my own children are not even aware of its existence, or its importance, or its simple human beauty: the right to walk down the street,” she writes in an essay titled “The Shame of Shuhada Street.”

Waldman notes that days before her visit, two Palestinian teenagers had been killed during a Nakba Day protest in the West Bank. “Video of the killings had surfaced on the Internet, and in my hotel room in Jerusalem I had watched as another Arab boy my son’s age, carrying the kind of backpack my son carries, doing nothing more than crossing a street — crumpled and pitched forward, motionless,” she writes.

At Baruch Goldstein’s grave

Waldman’s tour began at the grave of Baruch Goldstein, who shot to death 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 more in Hebron’s main mosque in 1994 before being killed by the crowd.

“The grave has become a site of pilgrimage and ecstatic veneration for some religious Israelis and sympathetic foreigners despite the Israeli government’s prohibition on monuments to terrorists,” she writes. “The massive slab of marble is inscribed with the words, ’He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land.’ On the day I visited, the gravestone was littered with small stones, placed there in homage in accordance with Jewish tradition. After puzzling over the epitaph (I was born in Jerusalem but my family emigrated to Canada before I learned to read), I brushed away the commemorative stones. A mass-murderer deserves no such honor.”