Netanyahu’s desperate bid to cling to power

He struck at dawn, 25 years ago this week. As Jews marked Purim and Muslims Ramadan, Baruch Goldstein walked unchallenged into Yitzhak Hall in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Here the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people are buried and here Muslims worship in what they call the Ibrahimi Mosque. Surveying the Muslims praying the Fajr, Goldstein opened fire, emptying his Israeli-made Galil of three and a half magazines in two minutes, a rate of almost one round per second. When his rifle jammed on bullet number 112, the Palestinians took their chance and overpowered the gunman, beating him to death with a fire extinguisher. Twenty-nine Palestinians lay dead and their murderer a few feet away. 

The Goldstein massacre is reviled in Israel as the worst act of Jewish terrorism since modern statehood. The killings and the deadly riots that followed underscored the wages of indulging or ignoring extremism within the settlement movement.