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JERUSALEM – Sara Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, admitted in a recent television interview that she was "troubled." The source of her anxiety was an internal Israel Police memo that raised the possibility that the imminent army pullout from Hebron might lead Jewish fanatics to try to kill her husband.

The Ha'aretz daily, quoting a "senior security source," reported that because of an increase in threats, direct and indirect, on Netanyahu's life, the Shin Bet had stepped up its protection of him. (The Prime Minister's Office would not comment on the report, saying it does not discuss matters concerning Netanyahu's security.)

Police confirmed that the Kfar Saba police station received an anonymous telephone threat against Netanyahu, but there were no suspects. Ha'aretz reported that Kfar Saba police received two threats against Netanyahu. One of the callers, who identified himself as a member of an extremist right-wing organization, said Netanyahu would be attacked by the end of the year.

Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, threats on an Israeli prime minister's life by Jews elicit much greater alarm than ever before. No one can write them off as meaningless.

They are especially worrisome as Netanyahu's new political enemies are the settlers of Hebron — who include some of the most politically extreme and violent Jews in Israel. Baruch Goldstein is a revered figure among them, and Yigal Amir also has his local advocates. Beyond Hebron — in other settlements, in Jerusalem and in various parts of "Israel proper" — there are many radical, ultrareligious Jews who see the pullout from Hebron as an unforgivable sin, and blame Netanyahu for it.

The ferocity of the language used against the prime minister has been escalating lately. "This is not Stalin 1936, this is Netanyahu 1996!" read posters pasted on the walls at Jerusalem's Central Bus Station.

"You Promised — We Believed — You Betrayed," read a placard at a Women in Green protest outside Netanyahu's Jerusalem home.

The most radical of the right-wing Knesset parties, Moledet (Homeland), sent a letter to Netanyahu calling on him to cancel the army's withdrawal from Hebron before he "enters history as the person who created the conditions to liquidate the Jewish community in the city of the Forefathers."

Mainly out of fear that Hebron radicals will attack Palestinians, but also out of fear that they may try to attack Israeli leaders — Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai is another potential target — security officials have begun jailing Hebron activists without charges. Noam Federman, former spokesman of the outlawed Kach movement, was the first such administrative detainee, and more are expected.

Hebron leaders insist that they are being harassed. They say it is not only heavy-handed but also stupid to arrest high-profile activists like Federman because well-known Hebron radicals are under constant surveillance and could hardly pull off an assassination.

If an assassin appears, they add, it is more likely to be an unknown individual; neither Goldstein nor Amir was on anybody's list as a potential murderer.

Despite the threats against Netanyahu, and the paranoia among Hebron Jews and their most fervent supporters, Hebrew University Professor Ehud Sprinzak — perhaps the outstanding authority on Israel's right-wing radicals — said these phenomena do not augur an actual attempt on the prime minister's life. Political conditions in Israel today are not the same as they were before the Rabin assassination, he maintains.

There are no huge demonstrations, no vows to bring the government down in the street, no "collective excitement," he noted.

The hottest religious passions have not been aroused against Netanyahu, Sprinzak continued. As yet no one is calling the prime minister a rodef or moser — names for Jewish traitors who, according to Jewish law, deserve execution. And no one has pronounced a pulsa denura death curse on him, either.

Yet there is no way to discount the possibility that a deranged person, an American-style assassin, may take a shot at Netanyahu or any other public figure, Sprinzak said. He does not believe Amir was deranged, saying his was a rational act that grew out of particular political conditions no longer extant.

Hebrew Union Professor Moshe Lissak, one of Israel's leading sociologists, disagrees. "Ever since the Rabin assassination, Israeli political culture has produced a new mutation: There are now thousands of people here who think there's nothing wrong with political assassination.

"We can't allow ourselves to be naive anymore," he said.