every aspect of the killings — including any failings by the army, the Shin Bet

every aspect of the killings — including any failings by the army, the Shin Bet, the police or other authorities that might have allowed the tragedy to happen. The commission interviewed dozens of witnesses, Israeli and Palestinian, in 31 separate sessions. I knew early on that the inquiry would throw up difficult issues. I was especially upset to learn that two soldiers and three border guards scheduled for guard duty at the mosque had shown up late on the morning of the killings. By the time I testified in late March, the inquiry had heard from a range of senior and local commanders and individual soldiers. A picture had emerged of a series of security breakdowns, equipment malfunctions, oversights and confusion around the site where the murders took place. I did not try to dodge the fact that security lapses around the Cave of the Patriarchs that day had contributed to what happened. In addition to the fact that the guard unit was not at full strength until after the murders took place, several of the security cameras weren’t working. I acknowledged that if the cameras and the guards had done their job, at the very least some lives might be have saved. Yet I also made the point that this specific act of mass murder was something the army could not have anticipated. I told the commissioners to remember that they were judging things after the fact. They knew how the tragedy had ended. In the context in which we were operating, the prospect of an Israeli settler, a reserve soldier, walking into a place of worship and deliberately killing defenseless Palestinians had come as “a bolt from the blue.” The commission’s report did not apportion blame to any of the army officers or commanders. But an inescapable conclusion from the testimony of the many witnesses was that the way in which we’d become conditioned to viewing the settlers had blinded us to the kind of crime Goldstein had committed. Even before I testified, I'd been disturbed to hear soldiers saying that even if they had seen him shooting a Palestinian, their orders were not to open fire on a settler, so they wouldn’t have intervened. When asked about this by the commission, I said it was a fundamental misunderstanding of our rules of engagement. “In no case is there, nor can there be, an army order that says it is forbidden to shoot at a settler even if he is shooting at others... A massacre is a massacre. You don’t need special orders to know what to do.” Yet I also knew that the soldiers’ “misunderstanding” was all too understandable. As I acknowledged to the inquiry, the army on the West Bank and Gaza was predisposed to see Palestinians who were carrying weapons as potential terrorists, especially since the outbreak of the intifada. The settlers, by contrast, were assumed to be carrying arms in self-defense. One lesson I took 260 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011731