On 25 February 1994, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, which had overlapped in that year with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan,[4] Goldstein, dressed in Israeli army uniform,[5] opened fire with an assault rifle on a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

The atrocity strained the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords peace process, immediately setting off mass protests by Palestinians throughout the West Bank.

[10] Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin condemned the attack, describing Goldstein as a "degenerate murderer" and "a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism".

[14] Following statements in support of Goldstein's actions, the Jewish ultranationalist Kach party was banned and designated a terrorist organization by the Israeli government.

Following the end of his active duty, Goldstein worked as a physician and lived in the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron, where he served as an emergency doctor.

[18] Goldstein became involved with Kach, and maintained a strong personal relationship with Kahane, whose views, regarded by the Israeli government as racist, had caused his party to be banned from the Knesset in 1988.

[19] Kahane was assassinated in 1990 by Arab terrorist El Sayyid Nosair in New York City, and Goldstein reportedly swore to take revenge for the killing.

A letter was written to Yitzhak Rabin, the then Israeli Prime Minister, by the Muslim authorities "regarding the dangers" of Goldstein and asking for action to be taken to prevent daily violations of the mosque.

[22] Four years before the massacre, an agent of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, who had infiltrated Kach, passed a warning to his superiors about the danger posed by Goldstein.

[27][28] However, these anonymous claims were repudiated by a number of sources, including Dr. Manfred Lehman and Dr. Chaim Simons, quoting the Shamgar Commission report.

However, The New York Times interviewed over 40 Palestinian eyewitnesses, many of whom were confined to hospital beds with gunshot wounds, and thus "unable to compare notes".

[35] During the inquiry, an Israeli Army official said three worshippers died in the stampede following the attack and five Palestinians were killed in street riots within Hebron later that day.

[40] Tikva Honig-Parnass wrote that 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured by Israeli soldiers who continued to shoot at those who were trying to flee the mosque, at those who were evacuating the wounded, and at people who were rioting at the Ahli hospital.

Arafat Baya’at, for one, is reported as having been shot dead by Israeli troops outside the hospital when he picked up a stone to throw at soldiers after seeing a friend of his being carried out of an ambulance.

[42] A total of 8 Israeli civilians were killed and 55 wounded in the first attack, which took place in Afula on 6 April,[43] at the end of the forty-day mourning period for Goldstein's victims.

According to Matti Steinberg, then Shin Bet head's advisor on Palestinian affairs, Hamas had until then refrained from attacking civilian targets inside Israel, and the change in this policy was a result of Goldstein's massacre.

[45] Four days after the massacre, on 1 March 1994, on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, Lebanese-born immigrant Rashid Baz shot at a van of 15 Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish students, killing one and injuring three others.

In an article commemorating the event's 20th anniversary, Al Jazeera reported that local Palestinians estimated the total number of deaths to be between 50 and 70, with an additional 250 people injured that day.

[48] The cabinet decided to confiscate the weapons of a small number[49] they regarded as right-wing extremists and put them in administrative detention, all the while denying the PLO's request that all settlers be disarmed and that an international force be established to protect Palestinians from Israeli aggression.

The commission in the epilogue to its report called the massacre "a base and murderous act, in which innocent people bending in prayer to their maker were killed".

[64][65][66] In eulogizing Goldstein, Rabbi Israel Ariel called him a "holy martyr", and questioned the innocence of the victims by claiming they were responsible for the massacre of Hebron's Jews in 1929.

[71] The New York Times report states that though "Israelis who worship the Brooklyn-born Dr. Goldstein are a small minority... they may be more than the minuscule fraction the Government claims.

"[71] In a pamphlet titled Baruch HaGever[Note 1] published in 1994, and a book of the same name in 1995, various rabbis praised Goldstein's action as a pre-emptive strike in response to Hamas threats of a pogrom and wrote that it is possible to view his act as following five Halachic principles.

[75] In the years after the dismantling of the shrine, radical Jewish settlers would celebrate Purim by invoking the memory of the massacre, sometimes even dressing up themselves or their children to look like Goldstein.

[81] The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 904 condemning the massacre and called for measures to protect Palestinian civilians including disarming Israeli settlers.