Amid a wave of Palestinian street attacks, day-time TV in Israel is offering advice on how to block a knife thrust or treat stab wounds as well as its usual fare of leisure tips and celebrity gossip.
For many Israelis, the last two weeks’ bloodshed has been close to home and unpredictable - “lone-wolf” attacks different from the suicide bombings of the Palestinian uprising a decade ago or rocket salvoes in the 2014 Gaza war.
Past conflict may have felt remote to many Israelis, but the current violence has been spearheaded by Jerusalem Palestinians, stirring solidarity protests among Israeli Arabs - populations that mix freely with the country’s majority Jews.
One man accused of a stabbing spree in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv, worked for the municipality. Another Palestinian used a car issued by his employer, Israel’s main telephone company, to ram a bus stop, then got out to hack pedestrians with a cleaver, killing one and wounding six before being shot dead.
Encouraged by jittery mayors, the government is weighing issuing more civilian gun licenses. Eligibility criteria generally favour those who have served in the military - common for Israeli Jews, much less so for Arabs exempted from the draft.
Civil war?
Some commentators are alarmed at a growing atmosphere of vigilantism. Some Palestinian attackers have been beaten by crowds after being subdued and there have been two reprisal knifings by Jews - one wounding four Arabs, the other injuring a Jew mistaken for an Arab.
So far, the Palestinian attacks have killed seven Israelis, and the police response or army confrontations with stone-throwers in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza frontier have killed 31 Palestinians. Far greater death tolls were inflicted during previous Intifadas, or Palestinian revolts. But many Israelis think the latest wave of conflict will escalate.
With US-brokered peace talks stalled since mid-2014, 41.5% of Israelis see a third intifada erupting within a year, according to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University; 88.8% expect it within three years.
Muslim anger over stepped-up Jewish visits to Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound unites supporters of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and rival Hamas Islamists who run the Gaza Strip. The compound site is revered by Jews as the site of two destroyed biblical temples.
According to a poll for the Israeli parliament’s TV station, 57% of Israelis believe the conflict is about religion, against 38% who see vying territorial claims as the cause.
Asked if a peace deal is possible in the foreseeable future, 65% of respondents said no and 22% said yes.