Twenty seven years ago, on February 25, 1994, Brooklyn-born zionist settler Baruch Goldstein carried out the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre in Al-Khalil (Hebron) in the occupied West Bank, murdering 29 Palestinians in cold blood and wounding over one hundred and fifty more as they prayed. Seven of the martyrs were children.
While the israeli government publicly condemned Goldstein and denied any involvement, eye witness accounts from the Palestinian survivors of the massacre exposed the zionist entity’s direct participation in the massacre and the violence that followed.
Hamadi al-Mohtesab, who was shot three times and left paralyzed, witnessed his friend die in an ambulance after occupation forces stopped them at a checkpoint and blocked the ambulance driver from reaching the nearest hospital.
Arafat Bayaat, one of the many Palestinians who rushed to donate blood after hearing the news of the massacre, was shot and killed by occupation forces outside of Ahli Hospital after giving blood.
In the aftermath of the massacre, Goldstein became a hero in the eyes of extremist zionist settlers in the West Bank, who turned his grave site in the illegal settlement of Kiriyat Arba outside of Al-Khalil into a shrine.
As much as zionist politicians and media pundits sought to distance themselves from Goldstein’s genocidal violence, the massacre was not the exception, but the rule, in the history of zionist settler colonialism. As long as zionism has existed, zionists settlers from around the world have moved to Palestine to participate in the genocide of Palestinians, from the Nakba up until today.
On the anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre we not only honor the memory of the 29 martyrs, but also defend the right of Palestinians to resist zionist genocide by any means necessary.
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