Following is an Arutz Sheva exclusive excerpt from author and WorldNetDaily Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein's newly released book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew!"

A rabbi took my hand and gently nudged me to join the dancing. Men of all ages were swaying throughout the structure, singing “Am Yisroel Chai” - the Nation of Israel lives on - as they encircled a central platform from which the Torah is read to the congregation every Shabbat and on several weekday mornings.

The synagogue was filled to capacity. Males were dancing and singing on the main floor; women singing on upper level balconies. Some congregates were clapping and laughing, others broke down into tears, sobbing violently in each others arms. I joined in the chorus and the dance, quickly finding myself flooded with emotion like just about everybody else. 

It was nearing midnight on August 16, 2005. The sound of rocket and mortar explosions could be heard sporadically throughout the night. I was in Neve Dekalim, the largest community of Gush Katif, the slate of Jewish towns located inside the Gaza Strip. In another nine hours, the residents of Neve Dekalim would be removed from their homes, some forcibly, and placed on buses that would take them into central Israel, never to return again to the Gaza Strip.

The Dekalim residents gathered in one of the city’s two main synagogues to pray and sing together and to dedicate a new Torah scroll in honor of the town. Rabbis and local leaders delivered tear-ridden speeches promising the spirit of Gush Katif would live on forever and that the area would eventually be rebuilt. The dancing, the speeches, and the crying went on for several more hours that night. For many Dekalim residents I think it was the first collective outburst of mourning, the first communal realization that Gush Katif would indeed fall. For me it was the painful culmination of many eventful months spent with the residents of Jewish Gaza.

Starting April 2005, I rented an apartment in Ganei Tal, a beautiful, tree-lined neighborhood near Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif, months before the vast majority of the media arrived to report on Israel’s Gaza evacuation. Most reporters showed up a few days before the withdrawal was carried out. For a good deal of the journalists it very obviously the first time they had visited Gaza’s Jewish communities, even for some who had been reporting about those same communities for years.

I set up shop in Gush Katif and reported from there early on because for me the story of Israel’s Gaza withdrawal was crucial. It was the litmus test for the concept of unilateral evactaution, for the policy of retreat under fire. And trust me, the Gaza withdrawal was carried out under fire. The residents of Gush Katif and I endured months of heavy rocket and mortar barrages, with some of the deadly projectiles landing dangerously close to my apartment on many occasions.

I usually slept in Gush Katif two to three nights per week for the first few months I was stationed there. I lived in Gaza the entire month of August. During my stay there, I prayed in Neve Dekalim’s main Ashkenazi synagogue many times.  I attended two bar mitzvahs in the Ashkenazi synagogue, which also served for me on six occasions as a refuge from incoming mortar and rocket attacks. A large Sephardi synagogue was located nearby.

On August 17, 2005, Israeli security forces cleared out Neve Dekalim’s residents. About three and a half weeks after that, on September 12, the last Israeli troop departed Gaza, officially marking Israel’s complete evacuation of the territory. And then the Palestinians rushed in with pick axes and torches.

Immediately after the Israeli evacuation, Palestinians mobs destroyed most of the Gaza synagogues, including the Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues in Neve Dekalim. In front of international camera crews, young Palestinian men ripped off aluminum window frames and metal ceiling fixtures from the Neve Dekalim synagogues. Militants flew the Palestinian and Hamas flags from the structures before mobs burned the synagogues down completely.

It was one of the most brazen displays of savagery in recent memory.

Most homes in Gush Katif had been destroyed by Israel prior to the evacuation. I bore witness as some Katif residents, with tears streaming down their faces, set their own houses ablaze so the Palestinians wouldn’t be able to utilize the structures for terror. But the Israeli government decided to leave all of Gush Katif’s twenty synagogues in tact.

Israel’s Supreme Court had earlier ruled the Gaza synagogues should be bulldozed by the Israeli army, citing what is said was previous rampant Palestinian desecrations of other religions’ holy sites as justification for the synagogue demolitions. But then�Prime Minister Sharon, who said he opposed thee demolitions, put the decision to an Israeli cabinet vote. The cabinet decided against destroying the structures.

Israel’s chief rabbinate had petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the synagogue destructions, arguing the demolitions contravene Jewish law.

Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, a member of the chief rabbinate, explained to me at the time: “According to Jewish law, synagogues cannot be destroyed unless new ones are already built, and even then, the issues are complicated. Here, the former Gaza residents don’t have homes yet to live in, new synagogues have not been built, so there isn’t even a question.”

The Rabbinate also expressed fear Jews in other parts of the world may use the bulldozing of the Gaza synagogues as precedent to destroy other abandoned synagogues.

Two years later, in a complete turning of the tables, the area where the two main synagogues in Neve Dekalim once stood is now used regularly by Palestinian terror groups as a military training zone and a site from which to launch rockets into Jewish cities bordering Gaza, according to terror leaders and Palestinian Authority sources.

A PA military post under the banner of “Guards of the Released Settlements” was erected at the entrance to Neve Dekalim, but none of the city’s ruins have been rebuilt by the Palestinians as of this writing. There are plans for a Hamas-led university in Dekalim, but as of 2007 the area is being used simply to attack Israel. PA sources and terror leaders in Gaza tell me Neve Dekalim was used in 2006 and 2007 periodically as training grounds for their groups.

“We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice, like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity,” said Muhammad Abdul-El, a spokesman and leader for the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization.

“The liberated lands of the destroyed ugly and Nazi settlements [Gush Katif] is our property, and we have the right to do whatever we feel is suitable for the struggle against the occupation and for the general interest of the Palestinian people,” the Committees spokesman told me.

The Committees is a coalition of terrorist organizations operating in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank responsible for launching hundreds of rockets from Gaza aimed at nearby Jewish towns. The Committees’ rocket attacks have devastated Israeli population centers nearby, including Sderot, a bustling city of twenty-five thousand and the port city of Ashkelon, home to strategic industrial facilities and one of Israel’s largest electricity generators.

Incredibly, Abdel-El blamed the Palestinian desecration of the Gaza synagogues on the Jewish state, claiming the decision to leave the structures in tact was part of an Israeli conspiracy.

“The Zionists left these so-called synagogues in order to make that one day  reporters like Aaron Klein would raise the pathetic and rude argument about what we have done to the poor Zionists’ holy places. [Israel] left the synagogues behind so the world would see the Palestinians destroying them,” Abdel-El said.

There you have it. The Palestinians are not to blame for acting like animals and burning down holy Jewish sites; instead the synagogue desecrations were Israel’s fault and part of a vast Zionist plot to taint the Palestinian image.

Abdel-El was right in one sense, though. Israel should have known what the Palestinians would do once they got their grimy hands on the synagogues. There was no question the structures would be desecrated. Even Palestinian leaders admitted as much, showing just how much faith they have in their own society.

Prior to Israel’s Gaza withdrawal, while the debate regarding the fate of the synagogues was still raging, Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat told me he begged Israel to destroy the structures. He too accused Israel of trying to make the Palestinians look bad.

“We of course have the highest respect for Judaism and the Jewish religion, but we cannot guarantee the synagogues won’t be desecrated,” said Erekat, speaking by cell phone from Gaza City in September 2005. “We are very upset at Israel about this decision to throw their problems on us by leaving the synagogues. They are trying to make us look like barbarians and now we’re stuck in a situation about whether to protect. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

Trying to make us look like barbarians? Mr. Erekat, the Palestinian mob that destroyed the Gaza synagogues are the worst kind of barbarians humanity has to offer.

According to Abdel-El, whose clan dominates large swaths of Gaza, the mob destruction of the synagogues was not planned but was a spontaneous outburst of “happiness” by young Palestinian men and children:

"The looting and burning of the synagogues was a great joy," said Abdel-El.  "There was no intention to desecrate them but this was part of the great joy the young men had when they destroyed everything that could remind us of the occupation.

"I want to say that all photos and video prove that those who destroyed or burnt were children and young people. It was in an unplanned expression of happiness that these synagogues were destroyed."

When I heard that I couldn’t contain my anger.

“As a Jew and as someone who prayed in the Gaza synagogues I was horrified by what I saw when the Palestinians destroyed the holy sites. You should be absolutely ashamed of Palestinian society and ashamed of yourself for calling the burnings an expression of joy,” I heatedly told Abdel-El.

The terror spokesman shot back:

"I cannot believe how much guts and arrogance you have to accuse us of destroying and not respecting religion and the holy sites of others," Abdel-El raged.

"You, would you call your son Muhammad? I am sure not. We the Muslims give our children the names of Moses and Jesus and Mary and this small example is enough to prove we respect the religions of others and shows who are the racists who express their hostility to Allah’s religion."

Is Abdel-El kidding? The only reason some Muslims name their sons Moses or Jesus is because their religion claims these figures were prophets who foreshadowed Islam. They’re not honoring Judaism by naming a son Moses; they’re honoring Islam.

Abdel-El went on to accuse Judaism of disrespecting other religions’ sites. He charged Israel turned “hundreds” of mosques into houses of prostitution and bars, a claim that has no foundation in reality.

“No nation in the world like the Jews has aggressed, destroyed, and desecrated the holy sites of other religions,” he said.

I asked Abdel-El what a synagogue meant to him. He replied it’s a symbol that represents a “divine religion that falsified the Torah.”

“The Torah is not the same one that Allah gave to Moses. But although the Jewish Torah was falsified we respect all places that belong to the different religions."

At that point, I had heard enough from Muhammad Able-El.

Klein's newly released book, "Schmoozing with Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal their Global Plans - to a Jew!" can be purchased by clicking on the hyperlinked title.