This is the hundredth of these letters from London. Writing them over the past two years has given me all kinds of unexpected pleasures, not the least of which has been to meet a few of the many readers who tell me that they feel better informed.

I know that the picture I have painted of Europe has been a dispiriting one. Yet Europeans are slowly waking up to the threats that Americans, Israelis, and many other nations face too, and it is certainly too soon to write off the Old World.

It is true that one sometimes cannot escape the feeling that we are sleepwalking into a crisis worse than any of the last bloodiest of centuries. Europe is in denial — more so, perhaps, than it was in the 1930s. Throughout the years of appeasement and isolationism that preceded World War II, dissenting voices were raised, among which Winston Churchill’s was the most eloquent. It must not be forgotten that, until the London blitz transformed Churchill into an iconic hero, he was dismissed by many of the British elite as an alarmist, a turncoat, a drunk, and “a half-breed American,” the last according to R.A. Butler, then undersecretary at the Foreign Office and later one of the most powerful of postwar British politicians.

Today we have Tony Blair to play the part of Churchill, but even though he has been prime minister throughout the last decade, he sounds increasingly like a voice crying in the wilderness of Westminster.

Late last year he flew to warn the Gulf states of the “strategic threat” posed by Ahmadinejad’s Iran. The British ambassador in Tehran was then carpeted and told that such “provocations” would not be tolerated. Given Iran’s record on hostages, in Mr. Blair’s place I would have pulled the British mission out of Tehran without delay, but no doubt he was told by the Foreign Office that this would weaken the “liberals” in the Iranian regime. It is amazing how we fall for this ploy every time. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei misses tea with President Ahmadinejad, and the “experts” fall over themselves with excitement — just as they used to speculate about similar rifts between Hitler and Goering. It is normal for totalitarian systems to have brutal power struggles, but democracies do well to ignore them.

Last week “Bibi” Netanyahu came to London with a team of legal experts to tell parliamentarians and the press about plans to hold Mr. Ahmadinejad to account for his incitement to genocide. A large crowd turned up to hear the former Israeli prime minister call for the Iranian president to be indicted under the 1948 Convention on Genocide, which obliges all signatories to arrest those who commit or incite others to commit genocide.

The Guardian, Britain’s leading liberal newspaper, sneered at the notion of an “existential threat” to Israel. It denounced Prime Minister Olmert for not doing even more to prop up Mahmoud Abbas, who is in fact partly financed by Israel, and told Mr. Olmert to allow Palestinian “farmers” to cross the fence, regardless of the risk to Israel. Two days later a Palestinian suicide bomber did indeed kill three civilians in Eilat. Among those claiming responsibility is the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the terrorist wing of Mr. Abbas’ Fatah party. The Guardian editorial concluded with a parting shot that may one day live in infamy: “A nuclear Iran is easier for Israel to contemplate than a Palestinian leader who wants peace.”

Pause for a moment to consider the monstrous implication — that Israel cares less about its own survival than about oppressing the Palestinians. How will that sentence read if, as is only too likely, the Ahmadinejad regime does indeed launch a nuclear attack on Israel if it is given the opportunity? These words were published on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, the 58th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Nor should the author be allowed to hide behind anonymity. The editorial was as usual unsigned, but the paper’s chief foreign editorial writer is Ian Black. So it is reasonable to assume that he wrote the offending words.

It is not as though this genocide were merely a theoretical possibility. Iran has already killed and maimed many thousands of Israelis through its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. For instance, 43 Israeli civilians were killed and 4,262 wounded by Hezbollah’s Iranian-supplied rockets last summer. The intention was openly genocidal. “If the Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide,” declared Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

And just in case anybody claims that Mr. Ahmadinejad was misquoted when he threatened to wipe Israel off the map, the indictment quotes 10 other statements by the Iranian president in which he says much the same thing. It also quotes Supreme Leader Khamenei: “There is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state.” Even for Guardian editorial writers, that ought to recall another supreme leader who talked about “the final solution of the Jewish problem” and “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Shame on you, Mr. Black, shame on the Guardian, and shame on all who play down a part of the European past that is all too hideously present.