Military Chief Defends Troops’ Role at Mosque : Israel: General also contradicts commanders who said soldiers were not to fire at Jews. He suggests they ‘misunderstood.’

In an angry, impassioned defense of his force’s role in last month’s mosque massacre in Hebron, Israel’s military chief of staff told a judicial inquiry commission Wednesday that the military never expected a Jewish settler to open fire on Arabs.

But Gen. Ehud Barak--Israel’s highest-ranking military officer--flatly denied earlier testimony from lower-ranking commanders that Israeli troops were under orders not to fire on Jews, even if they were shooting at Arabs. Barak suggested that the commanders had “misunderstood” orders.

“A massacre is a massacre is a massacre, and there is no need for a special order on the subject: If somebody is carrying out a massacre, he must be stopped,” Barak said under oath before the five-member commission investigating the killing of about 30 Palestinian worshipers as they knelt in Friday prayers in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs on Feb. 25.

Referring to Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born Jewish settler who fired with an assault rifle into a room full of praying Muslims, Barak added, “We did not expect that a crazy person would come out of the settlers and carry out such an atrocity.”

Barak’s public testimony, broadcast live to the nation on Israeli radio and television, came in the wake of a series of disclosures to the commission that suggested chronic indiscipline and intelligence lapses by Israeli security forces at the sacred shrine.

His hourlong opening statement focused mainly on the difficult task confronting the Israeli Defense Forces in policing Arab territory that Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, particularly since the onset of the intifada , or Palestinian uprising.

Under questioning by the commission’s lone Arab member--the first time ever that an Arab justice was allowed to interrogate Israel’s top military official--Barak appeared to reinforce earlier testimony from the acting commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank that the massacre could have been prevented if the military’s security plan at the site had been in full force.

“I think that the security plan for the Cave, as it was drawn up, if it had been kept completely, it is very probable that it would have prevented the massacre . . . or at least greatly reduced the extent of the crime,” the general stated.

But he deflected specific questions from Judge Abdel Rahman Zouabi, an Israeli Arab, that were based on earlier testimony from the acting West Bank commander, Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom, who told the commission that the massacre would not have happened if the full contingent of five security guards had shown up for work. Just one of those guards was on duty when Goldstein opened fire, Yatom has testified.

Zouabi also questioned Barak closely on Israeli military guidelines for the thousands of Jewish settlers who are permitted to carry arms in the occupied territories--and why they were allowed to carry them into sacred places of worship.

“They’re carrying weapons that they received legally for the purpose of self-defense,” he replied, explaining that, in 1982, after an Arab murdered a settler, the military allowed Jews to carry weapons to the Cave of the Patriarchs; they then were to leave them with the guard at the entrance.

Through the years, he said, those guidelines eroded, and it ultimately became standard practice to permit the settlers to enter the Cave with fully loaded assault rifles.