EPA

THE ugly little mid-summer war that has just ended in Lebanon spilled over into the parliaments, streets, television studios and dinner parties of Europe. By and large, Israel got the worst of it.

The Council of Europe said that Israel's response to Hizbullah's cross-border attacks was “disproportionate” and accused Israel of “indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets”. Romano Prodi, Italy's prime minister, called Israel's reaction “excessive”. In Norway, Jostein Gaarder, the author of “Sophie's World”, accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and murdering children, and said that the Jewish state had forfeited its right to exist. In many capitals, anti-war protesters marched under Hizbullah flags. When Britain's Tony Blair tried to explain things from Israel's point of view—and failed to call for an immediate ceasefire—his political stock took another tumble.

Mr Gaarder was prodded into a half-hearted apology. But the truth is that, far from being extreme, these criticisms of Israel convey the mood of millions of Europeans, rooted in what polls suggest is a hardening attitude. A YouGov poll in Britain, taken in the first two weeks of the conflict, found 63% of respondents saying that the Israeli response to Hizbullah's attack was “disproportionate”; a similar German poll had 75% saying so.

Such reactions reflect a wider European view of Israel that contrasts sharply with America's. In a Pew Global Attitudes survey earlier this year, far more Europeans sympathised with the Palestinians than with Israel (see chart). These findings come on top of a European Union poll in 2003 that had 59% of Europeans considering Israel as a greater menace to world peace than Iran, North Korea and Pakistan.

Why has Europe become so reflexively anti-Israel, just when America has become so reflexively pro-Israel? Europe has no equivalent of America's powerful AIPAC Israeli lobby, and it also has a disgruntled (and growing) Muslim population. But neither is enough to explain all the difference in attitude. Indeed, many Muslims in Europe now feel beleaguered and can only dream of wielding AIPAC's clout.

Some Americans blame rising anti-Semitism in Europe, which they also attribute in part to its growing Muslim population. But there is a difference between being anti-Semitic and being anti-Israel. And in any case, it is not obvious that anti-Semitism is a big factor. In central Europe, for example, there seems to be both greater anti-Semitism and more support for Israel. And some polls suggest that more Americans think Jews have “too much influence” in their country than do Europeans.

It is also often the right in Europe, linked with anti-Semitism in the past, that is most supportive of Israel today. Britain's Conservative Party, for instance, not always known for its admiration of Jews or Israel, is now the most pro-Israel party. In Italy, which invented fascism, Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and Gianfranco Fini's formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, are more pro-Israel than the government. In Spain, the centre-right opposition was highly critical of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, when he donned an Arab headscarf to show solidarity during the Lebanon war.

Countries that were most culpable in the Holocaust tend to be stauncher supporters of Israel—especially Germany. What was then West Germany became the main financial backer of the new Jewish state six decades ago, with a first payment of $865m in 1952. Aid continued throughout the 1960s, long before America became Israel's main source of outside support. This week's decision to commit German troops to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon also reflects past guilt.

If the right (and the Germans) are doing penance, the left, which now controls many of Europe's chanceries, and certainly much of its media, feels a sense of betrayal—which is why many now attack Israel with all the zeal of the convert. Until the 1960s European socialists championed the cause of the Jews and Israel. Mid-century socialists saw anti-Semitism and fascism as products of the right, so they became instinctively pro-Israel. In the 1950s it was left-wing French governments that provided Israel with nuclear power and a modern air force.

This changed with the six-day war in 1967, when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike to defeat the Jordanian, Egyptian and Syrian forces that seemed about to invade. It was a stunning victory, but it led to the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai. To European socialists, who had rallied to the underdog Israel in 1967, the Palestinians were now the oppressed and displaced. Israel came to be seen as a neo-colonial regional superpower, not the plucky survivor of the Holocaust keeping powerful neighbours at bay.

In the decades after 1967 Israeli politics also changed. The Labour Party, which had largely ruled Israel since 1948, began to lose ground to right-wing parties, notably Likud. European left-wingers, who had idealised Golda Meir's Israel as a pioneering socialist collective of happy kibbutzniks, were shocked by what they saw as the militarisation and racism of Menachem Begin's Israel—and they began a romance with the Palestinians instead.

This change can be chronicled over nearly a century in such liberal papers as Britain's Guardian. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, played a vital role in fostering the Guardian's early advocacy of Zionism and Israel, but the paper is now one of Israel's harshest critics. The BBC, a bastion of the soft left establishment, has also been criticised for its bias against Israel, not least during the latest war.

Attitudes to America have also clouded European views, especially on the left. As Israel has drawn closer to America in the past few decades, the left's antipathy towards the behemoth of capitalism has spilled into dislike of Israel. Public opinion in Turkey, the one Muslim country that was once pro-Israel, has turned against it in parallel with its turn against America, especially over the war in Iraq.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, an expert on Israel and Europe at Oxford University, argues that “Europeans see Israel as the embodiment of the demons of their own past.” The European Union is supposed to have traded in war, nationalism and conflict for love, peace and federalism. But Israel now reminds Europeans of darker forces and darker days.

Could attitudes change? It seems unlikely, not least because Israel is now so stridently critical of the Europeans, especially of their media. In this area, at least, the transatlantic gap is widening.