When Fury Rules

Dr. Baruch Goldstein was so blinded by enmity toward Arabs as to seem "batty" even to some of his fellow ultranationalist, fervently religious neighbors in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron in the West Bank. About a year ago, he was heard to prophesy, in a synagogue no less, that "there will come a day when a Jew will get up and kill many Arabs for killing Meir Kahane" -- the Jewish zealot slain in New York City in 1990.

But this was no simple crazy act. Goldstein was a fanatic who took precise steps carefully calculated to reach a clear, if evil, goal. Presuming the American-born doctor intended to kill the Palestinian-Israeli peace process while avenging what he considered crimes against Jews, he chose time, place and method well to produce the most inflammatory effect possible. What better time than a Friday, the Islamic holy day, during Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer, the same day as the Jewish feast of Purim, which commemorates the killing of the Persian royal minister Haman and his followers before they could carry out a planned massacre of Jews? What better place than the Ibrahim Mosque, where Muslims pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs -- a site thought to contain the graves of the prophets Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, guaranteed to draw a wall-to-wall crowd of worshippers? What better method than to spray clip after clip of bullets into them without warning?

Which Goldstein did, with shocking efficiency. By 5:20 a.m. about 700 men, women and children, having risen in the dark to down a hurried breakfast, had jammed into the mosque for the dawn prayers that mark the start of the sunrise-to-sunset fast on each of the 30 days of Ramadan. Prayers had just begun; the worshippers were kneeling forward on plastic mats, touching foreheads reverently to the floor.

Mohammad Suleiman Abu Sarah, a mosque guard, saw Goldstein, well known to the Muslims as a troublemaker, approach. He was wearing a reserve captain's olive-green army uniform and a yarmulke and carrying a military-issue Galil assault rifle. As a Jew living in the occupied territories, he was entitled to carry the weapon wherever he went. Speaking good Arabic, "he asked to go inside during the prayers," said Abu Sarah. "I said it is forbidden. He said, 'I am the officer in charge here, and I must go in.' " With that, Goldstein swung his rifle butt into Abu Sarah's shoulder, knocking him down, and then rushed into the mosque.

Inside, Goldstein "didn't say even one word," reported Abu Sarah. He simply took up a position close to the backs of the worshippers in the rear row and opened fire. "I saw seven people die immediately," said Abu Sarah. "They were hit in the head, and their brains spilled out. It was total chaos. Everyone was running here and there to try and hide. The mosque was full of blood and wounded people, dead people."

A second guard, too scared to give his name, corroborated: "People started screaming and running away. Others who were hit were calling for help. People were swimming in blood. It was difficult to distinguish between the dead and the living, because everyone was covered in blood." Worshippers raced outside with bodies and jammed them into ambulances without pausing to sort the living from the dead. Ambulance driver Khaled Jaabry discovered only when he reached a local hospital that among the wounded he carried there were his own son and brother.