Monday February 25, 3:36 PM Jewish settlers pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron February 25, 2002 on the eighth anniversary of an attack by Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein who killed 29 Palestinians at the site, known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi mosque. Israeli police cordoned off Goldstein burial site to prevent extremist Jews from gathering at his grave. Photo by Gil Cohen Magen/Reuters (Reuters)

KIRYAT ARBA, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli police cordoned off the burial site of a U.S.-born mass killer on Monday, the anniversary of his massacre of 29 Palestinians, to prevent extremist Jews from gathering at his grave.

Baruch Goldstein is still the hero of many fervently radical settlers eight years after he gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers at the burial place in the city of Hebron of the biblical Abraham -- the traditional forefather of Jews and Muslims.

"He had a heart of gold," said Eli Tzur, lounging on a chair in his restaurant near Goldstein's grave in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank. "He was a good man," said another settler, Mordechai Buchwald.

Seventeen months into a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, the diehard settlers of Kiryat Arba and nearby Hebron are more determined than ever to stay put.

They eye the breathtaking landscape of the West Bank with a proprietary air and thump the Bible with their hands when they talk about the land they say was promised to them by God.

The words "civil war" roll easily off their tongues when the prospect comes up that Israel may one day have to dismantle its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to make peace with the Palestinians.

"If that happens, there will be a lot of bloodshed," said settler David Ben-Shitreet.

Kiryat Arba's stone-clad apartment buildings are a few hundred yards from Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi mosque.

On February 25, 1994, Goldstein entered the shrine and fired around 100 bullets from an automatic rifle at Palestinian worshippers. Survivors bludgeoned him to death with a fire extinguisher.

For a Russian resident of Kiryat Arba, the park where Goldstein's grave is situated is a nice place to walk her dog.

But to Tzur and his friends it is a place of pilgrimage to a man they consider a national hero.

The destruction of a shrine at Goldstein's graveside under a Supreme Court order in 1999 and blue police barriers such as those put up around the site Monday have done nothing to douse their admiration of Goldstein.

These modern-day zealots scoff at the idea of peace and talk openly about expelling the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to elsewhere in the Middle East.

"(But) not to Jordan," said Tzur. "We still have land there. There are 22 Arab countries where they can go to," he said with a flick of the wrist, pausing as two Palestinian labourers entered the restaurant to buy sandwiches.

MYTHOLOGY

Goldstein's devotees have turned the story of his death into a myth that mirrors the legend of Purim, the Jewish festival on which he carried out the killing with the words "It is Purim today," before entering the Hebron shrine and opening fire.

"He saved us," said Ben-Shitreet. "The Palestinians intended to carry out a massacre with knives and guns. And he knew about it and saved us."

Those familiar with Jewish lore would recognize the story of Purim in which the Jews of Persia were saved by a righteous Jew named Mordechai from a plot to annihilate them.

Goldstein is Mordechai to many of his admirers.

In the topsy-turvy world of the southern West Bank, where settlers are armed with automatic rifles and prayer books, the villain is often the hero and the hero the villain.

The words of reverence they use for Goldstein turn into revulsion when they mention Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, slain in 1995 by a rightwing Jew who opposed the land-for-peace deals he had signed with the Palestinians.

"He (Rabin) is the murderer, not Goldstein," said Tzur.

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