When Jewish ambulances are burned in London and the country struggles to say plainly what that means, something has already gone badly wrong.

The arson attack on Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green was not random vandalism, nor some meaningless act of nocturnal thuggery. It was a message. A Jewish volunteer emergency service was chosen deliberately. Not a military installation. Not a government office. Ambulances – vehicles associated with rescue, care, and the preservation of life. The symbolism was not subtle, and it was not accidental.

Years ago, I warned that this was where we were heading.

I warned that Islamic radicalism was not simply a distant security concern or a matter to be dealt with somewhere over there by intelligence men, diplomats, and military planners. It was an ideological challenge to the self-confidence of free societies. Its ambition was never limited to acts of violence alone. It sought to intimidate, to unsettle, and to train democracies into habits of fear. It aimed not merely to wound those it hated, but to make everyone else afraid of resisting hatred.

That is precisely what we are now witnessing.

Attacks of this kind are cheap, simple, and effective. A few men, some accelerant, a few minutes under cover of darkness, and by morning an entire community is left with a new sense of exposure. The point is not always to produce mass casualties. The point is to produce fear out of proportion to the means employed. The point is to say: we can reach what protects you. We can touch what gives you security. Even your institutions of mercy are not beyond our reach.

This is not restraint. It is method.

And there is a further purpose here that Britain has been especially reluctant to confront. The aim is not only to........

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