The murder on Monday of Father Jacques Hamel was an act of unspeakable barbarity. But it was in no way surprising, given its Daesh perpetrators.

It will also have sent a shudder of recognition down the spine of every European Jew. Reacting to the murder and the subsequent official advice for increased church security, some church officials recoiled and said that no place of worship should be cut off from its surroundings. How true that is.

But Jewish communal buildings have long had to live with that constraint and with the extreme security that we take for granted. Visitors can scarcely believe the levels that we regard as entirely normal. The threat of terror is ever present and we adjust to it.

And yet, still, there are those who deny the evidence of their own eyes - who deny that we are engaged in a battle for the future of civilisation, who make excuses for the murderers, who argue that the West is somehow to blame. Will they never learn?