Born to a Jewish mom, for him the current protests are a step too far. Watching footage of them, he says, is akin to watching “hundreds of thousands of people coming into the streets in support of Hamas”. An avowed atheist, Harris rose to prominence as one of many “four horsemen” of the motion’s nouvelle obscure (his friends are well-known: Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens). He has made no secret of his disdain of the extremes of Islam. While hostages return to their households this week, the true disaster, he tells me, is much from over.