Israel’s centrists have discovered Meir Kahane Park. And who is buried there.
The grave of Baruch Goldstein in Kiryat Arba, West Bank, August 2018
Noa Landau reports in Haaretz on 27 August 2023:
Media coverage of Friday’s demonstration against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in Kiryat Arba caught the attention of social media: police officers surrounding a lonely grave in an empty gravel-covered plot.
In footage released by the police, officers are seen diligently preventing demonstrators, who were herded to a location removed from the house of the minister and his settler neighbors, from approaching this unusual gravesite. The police were standing guard. What exactly were they guarding?
The incomprehensible: members of Ben-Gvir’s police force were securing the grave of Baruch Goldstein in Meir Kahane Park in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron. Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 worshipers in Hebron.
Each detail in the preceding sentence is more troubling than the one before, but apparently, for some Israelis, the surprising fact was that there is a Baruch Goldstein gravesite in a Meir Kahane Park. “I had to Google it; I couldn’t believe there was a park named after Kahane,” wrote one person on the internet. “Shameful! There’s a Kahane Park?” another shocked commenter wrote.
Others wrote in astonishment: “I’m rubbing my eyes; it’s insane that there’s a park with that name;” “There’s such a park? God help us;” “Wait a minute, there’s a Kahane Park?” “How can they name a park after such scum?” “Shocking!” said another upon finding an entire Wikipedia page about the park.
Indeed, many years ago, Kiryat Arba established a park (a polite word for an ugly garden) named after the father of Kahanism. A sign was posted at its entry: “A tourist site named after the saint Meir Kahane, may God avenge his blood. He was a lover of Israel, a Torah scholar, a hero in deeds who was murdered while sanctifying God’s name.”
After the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, the terrorist Goldstein was buried there. His grave became a pilgrimage site. It has been reported that Yigal Amir – Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, who attended Goldstein’s funeral – said in his interrogation that “after Goldstein, it occurred to me that Rabin should be taken down.”
A further bit of trivia: In an interview with Ynet in 2004, Ben-Gvir’s wife, Ayala, revealed that her first date with the minister was at the site, saying, “We wanted to meet in a special place, and what could be more special than the Meir Kahane Park in Kiryat Arba, next to the grave of Baruch Goldstein?” It was reported in 2014 that the Kiryat Arba Local Council was deeply disturbed that young people were “exploiting the site’s darkness and isolation in order to have sexual relations near the grave of the murderer.” This is a real quote. Seriously.
Put otherwise: Yes, there is most certainly such a place. The sudden public astonishment stems from the fact that the political center, now awakening from a long slumber, has discovered it for the first time. That’s an important and positive development. Ever since Ben-Gvir entered the mainstream, the mainstream has had to look toward the dark corner from which he emerged. There’s tragedy here, but also an opportunity. If so many Israelis were unaware until now that there was a Goldstein gravesite in a Kahane Park, imagine what else they don’t know. Imagine how they’ll react when they find out what really happens in the West Bank, in their name and at their expense.
But for this to happen, it’s essential to dig beyond the layer of shock. Many Israelis were rightfully horrified when Ben-Gvir said that his right to “get around” in the West Bank is more important than “the Arabs’ freedom of movement.” But how many of them realize that this declaration is being implemented, in their name and at their expense, in reality? If you were shocked by Kahane Park, or by apartheid on the roads, don’t settle for being “shocked.” Go and see and learn about what happens in the occupied West Bank.
This article is reproduced in its entirety