One of the groups that accompanied the Shadow was Lehava (Flame), an association of religious extremists who see it as their mission to battle assimilation. Lehava tries to break up weddings between Muslims and Jews. Similar groups comb through Facebook looking for left-wing sentiment among Israeli Jews; when they find it, they send letters to their employers demanding that the lefties be fired.

Assaf Sharon, a young liberal activist and academic who went to a yeshiva in a religious Zionist settlement, told me that a few years ago he had helped stage a demonstration after settlers attacked Palestinians near Jerusalem. As soon as the small rally began, a group of young right-wing thugs were all over them. “We were thirty, they were seventy, and they had chains and knives and sticks,” Sharon said. “I had my nose broken. Some had limbs broken. The police were there, but there were no prosecutions. Now these same guys come to Tel Aviv, to Haifa. They are very hot-tempered, excited hooligans, and it is all anti-Arab. Their slogan is ‘A Jew Is a Blessed Soul, an Arab Is a Son of a Whore.’ ”