It isn’t hard to spot the difference in the press’s reaction to Israel’s carefully targeted response to the hail of missiles raining down on Sderot from Gaza, and the Lebanese government’s bombardment of a Palestinian “refugee camp” where terrorists belonging to Fatah al-Islam are holed up.

Lebanon’s action is — rightly — seen as a legitimate act of self-defense against a Syrian-backed attempt to destabilize its government. Israel, by contrast, is condemned for its decision to retaliate against the Hamas leaders who are ordering indiscriminate attacks on its civilians.

Right now, far more Palestinians are dying in the civil war between Hamas and Fatah, or between the Lebanese army and Islamist terrorists, than those who are being killed by Israel.

There is nothing new about this disproportion. In fact, since 1945, the number of Muslims killed by other Muslims outnumbers those killed by Israelis by a factor that far exceeds 100-1.

The death toll from the civil wars, genocides, and insurgencies that have raged across the Islamic world from Algeria to Indonesia simply dwarfs the numbers killed in the Arab-Israeli wars or the Palestinian intifadas.

Yet, here in Britain, as elsewhere in the West, the demonization of Israel is relentless. Press coverage during the run-up to next month’s anniversary of the Six Day War has been uniformly hostile. A vociferous campaign to lift the European Union’s boycott of the murderous Hamas regime is gaining ground, and, in any case, the aid is still flowing to the terrorists through all kinds of backwaters.

Nor has Hamas abandoned its genocidal policy towards Israel and America. One of its leading spokesmen, the acting speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmad Bahr, ended his sermon in a Sudan mosque last month with the following prayer: “Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet, defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them.”

This kind of thinking is driving the violence that is endemic at the interface between Islam and other civilizations. How long will it be before that interface runs through the streets of every major city in the West?

Europe today looks like a continent at peace. And so it is. With the exception of the Balkan nations, Europeans have enjoyed the longest continuous period of peace in modern history. For this, they have America to thank. Despite the hysteria directed at the United States, the pax Americana has been incomparably less oppressive than the pax Romana. In reality, however, Europe is a tinderbox.

In Berlin, former Baader-Meinhof terrorists hold master classes in rioting for protesters planning to disrupt next month’s the G-8 Summit in Germany. In France, the election of President Sarkozy has galvanized all the Chanel-scented sans culottes of our day to man the barricades.

The further east you go, the more febrile the situation. Poland has not been so worried about Russia since the martial law period of the 1980s. Estonia is fighting the first cyber-war in history. Russian e-sabotage has almost brought the government of Estonia — less than a third the size of New York State and a tenth of the population of New York State — to its knees. The Putin regime has also cut off transport links and trade. What prompted this malicious campaign? The Estonians moved a Soviet war memorial from the center of their capital to a military cemetery. That’s it.

But the biggest threat to civil order in Europe comes not from outside, but from within. At least 20 million Muslims now live in Europe, almost all concentrated in a handful of large cities in the richer, western countries. Hopes that they would gradually integrate into these ultra-tolerant societies, economies, and cultures have not become a reality. Muslims have chosen segregation instead. So the host countries are beginning to abandon multiculturalism in favor of integration.

In Sweden, the government is trying to ban arranged marriages and has proposed to ban the veil for girls who are under 15 years old, and instituting compulsory gynecological exams as a deterrent to prevent female genital mutilation, which occurs in some parts of the Muslim world.

The minister behind this policy, Nyamko Sabuni, is herself a former African refugee — and a former Muslim. She rejects accusations of Islamophobia from Muslim organizations: “I will not be scared into silence. I will never accept that women and girls are oppressed in the name of religion.”

It is striking that such outspoken voices so often come from those who know the Islamic world from the inside. The Dutch politician forced to go into hiding, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is the best-known, but there are more emerging all the time.

Ed Husain’s book “The Islamist” is a surprise best-seller in Britain. It charts the author’s spiritual journey from conversion to radical Islam to the brink of terrorism, followed by disillusionment and a new mission to save other young Muslims from predatory preachers.

As the Islamists take heart from the loss of nerve on Iraq and vilification of Israel, Europe looks ever more vulnerable to blackmail. This week, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaeda warned the French that they would be punished for exercising their democratic rights: “As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a leader … we in the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades warn you that the coming days will see a bloody jihadist campaign … in the capital of Sarkozy.”

Let’s hope that the voices of sanity have not come too late.