And despite the fact that Iran's threats to wipe Israel off the map are coupled with its dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons, Europe continues to indulge talk of a Middle East nuclear-free zone — a code word for disarming Israel — and finds an Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities a worse option than a nuclear-capable Iran.

Yet these threats are real — and given Jewish history, Israel might be excused for being a tad over-prudent when it comes to enemies who still openly dream of the day when Israel will no longer exist. The Holocaust is seared in Israel's collective memory-preventing another Holocaust is indeed one of Israel's raisons d'être. 

The same cannot be said of Europe. Even as Europeans routinely repeat "Never Again!" in reference to the Holocaust, their solemn commitment is not to prevent another Holocaust at all costs — it is rather to prevent war at all costs. For many Europeans, Israel's insistence on its national character as the state of the Jewish people is bound to yield the same tragic results Europe experienced when it toyed with nationalism. 

Israelis know what they mean when they say "Never Again!" For them, the slogan means: never again shall the Jewish people stand defenceless on the brink of annihilation, and Israelis are ready to fight if genocide knocks again at their gates. Europeans, by contrast, have repeated the "Never Again!" slogan for more than six decades, and yet they have watched indifferently over repeated genocides across the globe, from Cambodia to Rwanda, Sudan to Srebrenica, China to the Congo.

Lieven would probably blame these horrors on local versions of "hideous national conflicts" such as those which preceded Nazism. It is the wrong conclusion though. They occurred because those who invested themselves with the task of reconstructing Western civility in the second half of the 20th century failed to act upon the commitment that genocide should never be allowed to happen again.

Why then should Israel believe that, if its worst fears about its enemies turn out to be true, anyone will come to its rescue?