Palestinian Survivors of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre Remember the Horror
Twenty-nine years ago, Baruch Goldstein, a US-born Jewish settler, shot and killed 29 Palestinians in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque. Jacobin talked to witnesses, who now face a rise in the same extremist Zionism that motivated Goldstein’s slaughter.
Massacre survivor Husni Hussein al-Rajabi. Behind him, the walls are still riddled with patched up bullet holes. (Jaclynn Ashly)
Twenty-nine years ago — on February 25, 1994 — Baruch Goldstein, a US-born Jewish settler and member of the far-right Kach movement, entered the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Old City of the southern occupied–West Bank district of Hebron. It was during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and hundreds of Palestinians were crammed inside. When they bowed in prayer, Goldstein, dressed in his Israeli army uniform, unshouldered an assault rifle and began shooting indiscriminately.
Twenty-nine Palestinians — some of whom were as young as twelve — were shot and killed while offering fajr, the Muslim dawn prayer. At least 125 other Palestinians were injured.
“The entire mosque was turned into a pool of blood,” remembers forty-seven-year-old Mamoun Wazwaz, a survivor who was eighteen at the time of the massacre. “I was walking among the martyrs and injured; people were screaming. I was speechless. It felt like I was in a nightmare.”
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