Arafat’s boyz are back in town:

Thousands of triumphant Palestinians poured into abandoned Jewish settlements on Monday, setting buildings on fire, ripping out window frames and shooting in the air.

They ran amok as convoys of Israeli troops rolled out of the Gaza Strip in the final phase of Israel’s withdrawal from the territory after 38 years of occupation.

Palestinian police stood by helplessly as crowds set fire to an empty synagogue and a Jewish seminary, and Hamas gunmen raised their flags. Initial plans by police to keep the crowds away for several hours quickly collapsed, illustrating the weakness of the Palestinian security forces and concerns about growing chaos after Israel’s departure.

Gaza’s night sky turned orange as fires roared across the settlements. Women ululated, teens set off fireworks and crowds chanted: “God is great.”

Those fools do not seek our respect.

But in arguing against the pre-emptive destruction of the temples by the departing Israelis, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt wrote in Haaretz:

[W]e may well be witness to repugnant scenes of rampaging Palestinian youth desecrating that which is holy to us all as Jews.

If that were allowed to happen, it would bring back the most bitter memories of the history of the Jewish people, a history of Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Cossacks and Nazis.

All our oppressors desecrated and destroyed synagogues and all massacred Jews.

And yet, despite that knowledge, our ancestors never once descended to the level of their oppressors. They never pre-empted the destruction of their synagogues by lending their own hands to that destruction.

Even if we were coerced into respecting this brand of Islam, we had better respect Judaism and its ultimate contribution of the world and its history.