🕌 Israeli Terrorists Take Over a Palestinian Mosque and Hold Celebrations Inside. In 1994, an American Jew Slaughtered 29 Palestinians There.

Imagine if these roles were reversed. It would be ON EVERY NEWS STATION IN THE WORLD and you know it.

This week, Israeli settlers stormed Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and held celebrations inside. Not outside. Not near it. Inside. They turned a sacred Muslim space into a stage for dominance.

And the location isn’t random. This is the same mosque where Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 Muslims during Friday prayer. The history is not a footnote. It’s the message.

Before I explain what you’re seeing and why it matters, I need to ask you from the heart to become a member today. I keep this work free for the world—for readers in Gaza, for students in public schools, for families living in deep poverty, for elders on fixed incomes—because a smaller circle of people who can afford it chooses to carry some of the cost. Please click here to become a member and click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Your support keeps this work free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.

Now let’s talk about what happened in Hebron—and why the people celebrating know exactly what they’re doing.

If you watch the video, you’ll see men in religious garments singing, smiling, and acting like they’ve conquered something. Because they have. This is the language of settler colonialism when it stops trying to be polite. It’s not “security.” It’s not “religious freedom.” It’s humiliation as policy.

Al-Ibrahimi Mosque is not just any mosque. It is one of the holiest sites in Islam, revered because it is tied to Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham). It is also sacred to Jews. In a just world, that would mean shared reverence. In occupied Palestine, it has meant shared space turned into controlled space, then controlled space turned into stolen space.

A generation ago, on February 25th, 1994, a Jewish extremist settler named Baruch Goldstein opened fire inside that mosque during Friday prayers in Ramadan. He killed 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded many more. People weren’t armed. They weren’t “combatants.” They were standing shoulder to shoulder in prayer.

And then the occupation did what it so often does: it treated Palestinian life as the problem to be managed. The site was partitioned, Palestinian access was restricted, and Hebron became one of the clearest laboratories of what domination looks like in practice—checkpoints, closures, soldiers, settlers, and a daily life built around fear and humiliation.

So when settlers “celebrate” inside Al-Ibrahimi this week, it isn’t just a provocation. It’s a declaration: “We did this. We own this. We will do it again.” They are celebrating not only the takeover of a building, but the takeover of a people’s ability to exist with dignity.

And yes, this connects directly to the ideology that has been elevated inside Israel’s government.

Middle East Eye reported in May 2023—in an article by Frank Andrews—that Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was filmed speaking in front of a wall-hanging glorifying Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein, referring to them as “martyrs.” The article notes that Ben-Gvir has previously described Goldstein, the man who massacred 29 Muslims, as his “hero.” It reports that a clip from 1995 shows Ben-Gvir dressed as Goldstein for Purim saying, “He is my hero.” It also reports that Ben-Gvir kept a portrait of Goldstein in his home for years and only took it down in 2020.

In fact, this wasn’t some internet accusation. In January of 2020, Israeli reporting described how Itamar Ben-Gvir said he would take down the photograph of Baruch Goldstein from his living room in order to make himself more politically “acceptable” and join a unified right-wing slate. Let that sink in: the issue wasn’t that a man who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers had been honored in his home—it was that the photo was becoming politically inconvenient. Ben-Gvir even framed the removal as a tactical move, saying he was “removing the photograph in my living room” for the sake of “unity” and a right-wing electoral victory. Not repentance. Not remorse. Optics.

That is the ideology behind the celebrations inside the mosque today: terror becomes tradition, and tradition becomes policy.

I want you to sit with what that means. A man who revered a mass shooter—the killer of worshippers in a mosque—didn’t get shunned to the margins. He rose. He was polished. He was promoted. He now holds power over police and internal security. That’s not “fringe.” That is a society putting a seal of approval on the ideology that treats Palestinians as removable.

So when settlers storm a mosque and celebrate inside it, they are not acting “against the state.” They are acting inside a culture that has been trained to see Palestinian humiliation as victory.

And this is exactly why Gaza cannot be separated from the West Bank, from Jerusalem, from Hebron. For over two years, the world has watched horrors in Gaza so constant that many people’s ability to feel shock has been numbed. But the genocide is not only bombs. It is also land theft, displacement, desecration, and the steady erasure of Palestinian life—one neighborhood, one village, one holy site at a time.

If you’re a young student reading this, here’s the simplest way I can say it: they are trying to make it impossible for Palestinians to live normally in their own land. They do it with bulldozers. They do it with checkpoints. They do it with settler violence. And they do it with symbolic acts—like celebrating inside a mosque where worshippers were massacred—because symbolism teaches everyone who is “allowed” to belong.

If you’re a trained historian reading this, you already recognize the pattern: violence, then administrative control, then the normalization of the new reality. Facts on the ground become “inevitable.” The theft becomes “history.” The victims are told to accept it as “complex.”

But it isn’t complex. It’s organized cruelty.

And it is being carried out in front of the world.

Family, I’m not sharing this video to inflame hatred. I’m sharing it because I refuse to let the occupation rename itself as “normal.” I refuse to let the desecration of a mosque be treated as a “clash.” I refuse to let people celebrate dominance and then demand the world call it peace.

What you’re watching is the occupation speaking its truth out loud.

If you want this work to remain free for the world, please stand with me. Please click here to become a member and click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Your membership keeps these posts available to anyone who needs them—especially the people who cannot afford paywalls but deserve truth.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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