In the immediate hours after Wednesday’s Islamist murders in Paris, a hashtag appeared on Twitter: #JeSuisCharlie. On one level, it was nothing more than an expression of support for the victims which all decent people would share. And the breadth of that support — of sheer outrage at the depravity of the Islamist butchers responsible — is important as the West seeks to protect itself from the threat of radical Islam. But on another level, it prompts a particular thought among Jews: are we not all, to the Islamists, Charlie Hebdo? From what we know, it seems clear that the murderers were seeking some kind of warped vengeance for the magazine’s publication of cartoons of Mohammed. But the Islamists do not even bother creating supposed reasons for their targeting of Jews. Whether it is the Toulouse school massacre, the murders at the Jewish Museum in Belgium or any of the myriad other attacks on Jews simply for being Jews, we are a community whose very existence is an outrage to the Islamists. To date, we have been spared such a massacre of Jews here in the UK. But many will think it is a matter of when, not if. With militarily trained Islamists returning from Syria existing under the eye of the authorities, they certainly have the capability.

For now, our attention is focused on Paris. But — as that Twitter hashtag rightly has it — although that was its geographical location, it was an attack on freedom and decency everywhere. A real attack — with guns, in which people died. Not the type of “attack” that those who refuse to acknowledge the severity of the threat to the West say we face from attempts to give the authorities more powers. We need to get real about this. Instead of complaining about a loss of civil liberties while innocent men and women are butchered by Islamists, we have to give those we charge with defending us at least some of the tools they need — and if that means that some of our sensibilities are offended, so be it. #JeSuisCharlie