Close to 300 people have died in western European cities and more that 380 in Turkey in the last 2½ years at the hands of jihadi groups like Islamic State, Kurdish nationalists, or lone-wolf sympathisers. Attacks in Brussels, Paris, Nice, Istanbul and other Turkish cities, and the repeated threats from Islamic State leaders to take their war to Europe were harbingers of the deadly attack in Berlin's Christmas market and the killing of Russia's ambassador to Turkey.
Proof that Islamic State, also known as Isis, was indeed behind both attacks is not yet available. Perhaps it was not involved, but in the court of public opinion it seems it scarcely matters who the perpetrators were, or who was pulling their strings, if anyone.
Islamic State will claim and get the “credit”, and once again another nail will be driven into the coffin of dialogue and reconciliation, their advocates silenced by the impossibility of preaching reason in the face of outrage after outrage.
And, once again, young, disillusioned men and women will be enticed to Islamic State’s banner by the eloquent demonstration of its reach and power. This is the propaganda of the deed.
Berlin has clearly been on the list of targets, as its politicians have acknowledged repeatedly, in part for its commitment with other European states, to fighting Islamic State and its values. But the real prize in at last successfully striking at Germany was bigger, and essentially political – the undermining of Angela Merkel, the one politician in Europe most identified with a determination to show that the continent is willing and able to reconcile Christian and Muslim traditions. Or at least try to.
Merkel's rising rivals on the right in next year's elections, the Alternative für Deutschland, riding on the coat tails of Brexit and Trump, were quick to label the Berlin casualties "Merkel's dead". In doing so they in truth aligned themselves firmly with IS for whom a new "Fortress Europe", flourishing Islamophobia, expulsions of migrants, and a crackdown on borders and rights would be manna from heaven. Evidence that Europe is the Europe of crusaders.
The chancellor will be particularly damaged if evidence emerges that the attacker was indeed one of the million refugees she let in to Germany over the past two years.
“I know,” she admitted on Tuesday, “it would be especially hard for us all to bear if it were confirmed that the person who committed this act was someone who sought protection and asylum.” But her appeals not to conflate individual asylum crimes with the entire asylum population is wearing thin with many Germans.
The attack on the Kaiser Willhelm Christmas market had an ironic poignancy to it, however – the ruined church, most of which was destroyed by bombs in 1943, is preserved today as a symbol of both remembrance and reconciliation, and has links to other churches where the cost of war is remembered. That is the spirit of the new Germany, a spirit which will prevail.