There has been a tidal wave of reactions at home and abroad to the murder of 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsha and the severe wounding of his father Saad, his mother Reham and his 4-year-old brother Ahmed in Douma, near Nablus, July 31. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared by the bedsides of the wounded, “Terror is terror. We must fight it whatever its origin.” Fighting words, indeed. But when law enforcement among extremist settlers is not really law enforcement, investigations are not really investigations and punishment is not truly punishment, “Terror is terror” is nothing but a hollow slogan.

What would the “shocked” Netanyahu have said had the Dawabsha family been somewhat luckier, like the family from the West Bank village of Dura El-Kara, who on June 22 escaped the three firebombs thrown at their home? What statement would he have issued had little Ali Saad “merely” lost his home and not his life, like the Khirbat Adirat villagers whose home was set on fire in December? Would the prime minister have bothered to visit the hospital if the crime in Douma had ended in minor burns? Ask the dozens of Palestinians whose homes and fields have been set ablaze, whose mosques were violated.

It would seem that the intense fight over the nonexistent Iranian nuclear bomb, which will likely never be created, diverted the attention of the prime minister and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon from the bomb ticking under their noses. There’s something symbolic in that several hours before the murder in the village of Douma, Netanyahu convened diplomatic affairs correspondents for a briefing in yet another attempt to besmirch the agreement with Iran. Talking to the reporters, he claimed, “The intelligence services of the world’s powers failed to locate nuclear facilities such as the bunker in Fordow or the enrichment facility in Natanz.” A little humility wouldn’t have hurt the leader of the state whose intelligence services have failed for years to locate and try several dozen Jewish zealots whose crimes against Palestinian citizens could ignite the Middle East.

According to data compiled by the Yesh Din organization, which has for years been monitoring law enforcement among settlers, only 7.4% of the complaints lodged by Palestinians with police in the past decade against Israelis resulted in indictments (out of a total 1,067 complaints the organization has been following since 2004). The complaints include assault, shootings, stone throwing, theft, arson, destruction of olive trees and other crops, killing and injuring livestock, damaging holy sites, trespassing and preventing access to land owned by Palestinians. The researchers of Yesh Din and other human rights groups such as B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence have documented dozens of incidents in which Israel Defense Forces soldiers looked on as settlers attacked Palestinian shepherds and prevented farmers from working their lands.