MASSACRE ALTERS LIVES OF JEWISH EXTREMISTS
By ROBERTO FABRICIO Foreign Editor
KIRYAT ARBA, Occupied West Bank — In the pine-lined streets of this Israeli enclave, the massacre of 39 Muslims at the Tomb of the Patriarchs has become a neighborhood affair.
Historically the most hard-line of Israel's settlements, Kiryat Arba was the home of mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein. Some of his neighbors still talk of carrying on his dreams, "for the Kingdom of Judea."
But the massacre, done in behalf of that Messianic dream, also is beginning to change their lives.
Some are in hiding from arrest warrants; others have had their army-issue weapons confiscated; for the first time since the settlement was founded in 1969, it was closed off to the outside, a crackdown usually reserved for Arab villages.
As the Israeli government tries to control extremist settlers, more lives and the settlement movement itself may be transformed.
The story of the Hebron massacre can be told simply through three men, friends and settlers together in Kiryat Arba.
Dr. Baruch Goldstein was a doctor and army reservist, and the gunman in the mosque massacre.
Noam Federman was his neighbor and supporter, now in hiding to avoid arrest.
Rabbi Moshe Levinger is their spiritual leader, the founder of the settlers' religious movement, Gush Emmunium, or Block of the Faithful.
When Levinger wants to communicate with Federman now, he must leave a message with Federman's wife.
Federman went underground on Monday. He is subject to arrest because he is propaganda chief for the extremist Kach Party, which advocates the extermination of Muslims. "He's running away," said his wife, Miri. "They wanted to arrest him, but they didn't find him."
The dragnet is but the first shot in a looming clash between the Israeli -gov-ernment and its most militant settlers.
Many of those hardliners live in Kiryat Arba, where a sign at the gate, in Hebrew, reads: "Zionist political settlement. And even as it is tortured, it will thrive."
The extremists are only a fraction of the 143,000 settlers in the occupied territories. But, as the Tomb of the Patriarchs massacre showed, it takes only a few determined people to create a crisis and potentially derail the peace process.
Now the Israeli government is trying to rein in the extremists. By week's end, 32 settlers were marked for detention or ordered to turn in their army-issued weapons. But Palestinians and other critics say the clampdown came too late - that the Israeli government ignored or missed signs long before the Hebron massacre.
"These people [Kach extremists) gave all the signals they were ready to commit a dastardly act for years. All the red flags were there," said Dr. Ehud Sprinshak, a settlements researcher at Hebrew University.
In the extremist ideology of the most hard-line settlers, the ultimate goal is a land of Israel that includes all the historical Jewish lands, totally free of Arabs. Only then will they be ready for the coming of the Messiah and transformation in the holy Kingdom of Judea.
The current state of Israel is not the true promised Jewish homeland, they believe, because it is not a pure Jewish state. Two million Arabs live in the occupied territories alone; they must be removed, the extremist ideology holds, by force if necessary.
"The Kingdom of Judea, after the Messiah, is what most [of us) are waiting for," said David Ramati, a Kiryat Arba settler, American emigree and friend of Goldstein and Federman.
"One day, we will all have to kill Arabs. Everyone knows that," Ramati said. Peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization cannot be allowed to succeed, the extremists say, because the ancient lands of Judea and Sumeria cannot be relinquished. Every incident of Arab terror only provides more reason to try to stop the peace talks.
"We [Jews and Arabs) both believe God wants us to be here," Ramati said. "There's obviously not going to be any room for compromise."
Those feelings are particularly focused on Hebron, the second holiest site in Judaism after Jerusalem. Kiryat Arba was founded by Levinger on a hill overlooking Hebron, a powerful symbol to Messianic Jews.
"Hebron is the first Jewish city in history. The Tomb of the Patriarchs is the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah and also of Adam and Eve," said Mordechai Taub, a Hebron activist. "The rabbinic teachings say that the cave is the portal into the Garden of Eden."
Muslims, too, find the site holy, because Islam also traces its roots to Abraham.
The Israeli Defense Forces commander in the Hebron area last year predicted that "there is going to be a war in Hebron."
Sheik Hassan Tahboub, who heads the Muslim council in Hebron, had written two letters to the Army complaining of harassment by settlers and specifically by Goldstein.
In fact, there is voluminous information, going back to the early 1980s, of illegal activities using Kiryat Arba as a base. The settlement once was the Israeli home of extremist American Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of Kach.
"Numerous leads have been forwarded by FBI headquarters to the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service in Washington, D.C. Response to those leads is crucial for the solution of twenty-five terrorist incidents," a 1987 FBI memo says.
In his 1990 book, The False Prophet, Rabbi Meir Kahane, author Robert I. Friedman quoted a Justice Department officials as describing Kiryat Arba as "a haven for right-wing Jewish extremists."
Goldstein seemingly verified all the signals when he slipped into the Tomb of the Patriarchs with his army-issued Galil automatic rifle and mowed down rows of praying Muslims. Still, with as much warning as there seems to have been, the Israeli government and society reacted to the massacre with disbelief.
"No one envisioned here that an Israeli was capable of such an act," said Gad Ben-Ari, a spokesman for Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin. "This act came as a shock to the political system at all levels."
Critics for years have complained about an overly cozy relationship between Israeli Defense Forces officers and the settlers. IDF spokesman Capt. Daniel Seaman acknowledged the controversy, but said he could not comment further because of "an official inquiry into the events of Hebron which will look at all those issues."
If anything, however, the massacre has emboldened the extremist settlers. Last Tuesday, a newborn was circumcised at Jerusalem's Western Wall. His name: Baruch Goldstein.
For his part, Rabbi Levinger, 88, says he cannot understand why the Jews who govern Israel would want to arrest his friend and neighbor Federman.
After all, complains Levinger, "Noam is an observant Jew."The rabbi has told his neighbors in Kiryat Arba that Goldstein's act "was meant as helping Zionism attain its ultimate goal."
Levinger has tried to help Zionism, too. In 1989, he shot and killed a Palestinian in Hebron after Levinger's car was stoned. For manslaughter, the rabbi got six months in jail. He is still packing the same automatic pistol.
Not all settlers agree with Levinger.
"The founding father of the settlement movement [Levinger) does not see that his handiwork is sinking into the sea," wrote Yisrael Harel, editor of the settlers' newspaper and chairman of the Council of Jewish Residents of Judea, Sumeria and Gaza.
Indeed, most of the settlers are simply middle-class Israelis who moved to the territories for inexpensive homes in the suburbs.
Yet enough of the hardliners live in the settlements to make the threat to the peace process very real.
Before he went into hiding, Federman told The Jerusalem Post: "We lower our heads before our holy hero, Rabbi Dr. Goldstein. ... If the government doesn't stop the Arab terror, there will be more dead Arabs."
More than 500 rabid supporters of Kach attended Goldstein's funeral, calling the massacre a mitzva, or gift.
Some said it was "the greatest day in the history of Israel."