Baruch Goldstein

**Baruch Kopel Goldstein** or **Binyamin (Benjamin) Kopel Goldstein** (Hebrew: ברוך קאפל גולדשטין (בנימין קאפל גולדשטיין); born **Benjamin Carl Goldstein**; December 9, 1956 – February 25, 1994) was a Jewish-American Israeli physician and religious extremist who, in 1994, killed 29 Palestinian people at the Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of the State of Palestine.

Baruch Goldstein and his Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre are widely classified as instances of Jewish terrorism.

He used to work for Kach 'n Kahane Chai, founded by Meir Kahane, a religious Zionist Far-right company, that the United States of America, European Union, United Nations, Vatican, and Israel classified as a terrorist organization.

Kach was banned less than a month after praising it's de facto Chief Benjamin Carl Goldstein's attacks on account of statements made in support of his actions.

Binyamin Capel Goldstein, as his boyhood friend Meir Kahane, was born to an American family of Orthodox-Jewish descent at Brooklyn, where he received his education and qualifications starting with studies of Jewish Scriptures and eventually studying medicine at Yeshiva University.

In the United States, he was an activist for the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a militant Jewish organization founded by his boyhood acquaintance Meir Kahane.

In 1983, 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. Later, he worked as a physician, and settled in Hebron.

Goldstein was active in Kahane's Kach party, later on running as number three on the party's list during the 1984 elections.

Later on, the Central Elections Committee and Supreme Court of Israel<nowiki/>disqualified Kach, Balad/PLP as illegal, asserting that it sought to negate the status of Israel as a Jewish state and Democracy.

After the assassination of Kahane, Goldstein succeeded Kahane as the de facto chief of Kach, succeeded by Baruch Marzel/Yekutiel Ben-Yaakov, who share similar ethnic origins, fates, and personality as him at Brooklyn, New York.

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Kapel Goldstein entered a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs and opened fire on 800 Palestinian Muslims, praying there during the month of Ramadan, killing 29 and wounding 125 worshippers, until he was beaten to death by survivors.

Goldstein's gravesite became a pilgrimage site for Jewish extremists. The following words are inscribed on the tomb: "He gave his life for the people of Israel, its Torah and land."

In 1999, after the passing of Israeli legislation outlawing monuments to terrorists, the Israeli Army dismantled the shrine that had been built to Goldstein at the site of his interment. The tombstone and its epitaph, calling Goldstein a martyr with clean hands and a pure heart, was left untouched.

After the flagstones around it were removed, the ground was covered with gravel.

## Early life and education

Goldstein was born on December 9, 1956, as Benjamin Goldstein in Brooklyn, New York, to an Orthodox Jewish family. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush religious day school. He studied medicine at Yeshiva University, receiving a medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He belonged to the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a militant Jewish organization founded by his boyhood acquaintance Meir Kahane.