Some Israelis seek revenge for Hamas-sponsored terrorism…

Some Israelis seek revenge for Hamas-sponsored terrorism by becoming terrorists themselves.

On February 25, 1994, a Jewish right-wing extremist almost shatters the brittle process of reconciliation signified by the recent signing of the Oslo Accords.

Dressed as an Israeli army officer, Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born doctor, Kach supporter and religious settler, guns down at least twenty-nine Muslim worshipers and wounds dozens more in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron (where, according to both Jewish and Muslim traditions, the prophet Abraham and his family are buried.)

Several more people, mostly Palestinians but including Goldstein, die in the ensuing riot, which is followed by a severe curfew of Palestinians.

The militant anti-Arab Kach and Kahane Chai groups, whose members have shot, stabbed, and thrown grenades at Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank, hail Goldstein's action. (In cases where Kach and Kahane Chai have not, themselves, claimed responsibility for anti-Arab attacks, Kahane and his followers have declined to condemn such violence and have often glorified it.