Israel's marathon election campaign has barely begun, but already there are ominous signs that it is going to be both vicious and violent.
Since the elections, set for May 17th, have been brought forward by more than a year because of the collapse of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition amid charges of deceitfulness and incompetence, it is no great surprise that Mr Netanyahu is coming under personal attack, and that he is hitting back with accusations against his would-be successors.
The Prime Minister has been branded "dangerous to Israel", and it has been suggested that only more sensible Ministers have prevented a series of military misadventures during his tenure. The Labour leader, Mr Ehud Barak, has been derided as a man who flees from responsibility. The centrist Gen Amnon Lipkin-Shahak has been mocked as a political innocent, surrounded by manipulative criminals.
What is more surprising, and more worrying, is the evidence, so early in the campaign, of a readiness by lower-level political activists to threaten violence against the candidates. Already, police have arrested one man for allegedly issuing threats to Mr Netanyahu and another for allegedly threatening to attack Mr Barak.
Last Thursday, when Gen Lipkin-Shahak, a former army chief-of-staff, went on a political walkabout in an outdoor market in Tel Aviv, only a ring of his brawny, fist-waving colleagues saved him from physical assault, and he was bombarded with vegetables and with curses, including one alleged warning that "the next bullet will be in your head".
The allusion behind that particular threat was to the murder in November 1995 of Yitzhak Rabin by an Orthodox right-wing Jew who opposed his land-for-peace agreements with the Palestinians. The election campaign that followed, and which brought Mr Netanyahu to power in May 1996, was restrained and non-violent, coloured by the nation's shock that one of its own had stooped to political murder. But Israel's police chief, Gen Yehuda Wilk, warned at the weekend that he feared that restraint had now dissipated, and that the current campaign could prove to be the most dangerous in Israeli history.
Few Israeli security experts rule out the possibility of a second political assassination, and police and Shin Bet security chiefs are taking extraordinary precautions to safeguard the candidates. Every prime ministerial candidate, and there are more than half-a-dozen already, is to be surrounded on future walkabouts by a ring of bodyguards. When appearing in public, the candidates will be required to wear bullet-proof vests. When speaking at closed public gatherings, audience members will be searched. The bodyguards and the vest were absent when Gen Shahak went out last week, the police say, only because the candidate had neglected to inform them in advance of his plans.
The rigorous security is bound to hinder direct contact between candidates and the voting public. Last week, Mr Netanyahu gave clear expression to this at a gathering of Likud activists, when he opened his jacket, revealed the bullet-proof vest, asked those present if they were all Likud folk and, on getting a shouted affirmative, removed the protective garment.
His left-wing and centrist opponents castigated him for this - not only for undermining security, but for implying that their voters might resort to violence. Israel's history suggests that it is not activists on the left or in the centre, but right-wing extremists who pose the real threat.
Fourteen members of an apocalyptic cult were deported from Israel and returned to Denver, Colorado, on Saturday. Israeli police say that the Concerned Christians cultists were planning a mass suicide or other violence in Jerusalem towards the end of this year to hasten the Second Coming of Jesus.