The murder on Sunday of brothers Hillel and Yagel Yaniv by a Palestinian terrorist in Israeli town of Har Bracha was a despicable act — and one, tragically, which Israelis have had to grow used to.

The vast majority understands instinctively that the only correct response is to allow the authorities to take the proper action. However painful, what can never be justified — and is, indeed, profoundly un-Israeli — is for individuals to wreak their own vengeance on innocent Palestinians.

The riots that followed the killings, with 400 settlers rampaging in the nearby town of Huwara, and the appalling murder of a Palestinian blacksmith who had just returned from earthquake volunteering efforts in Turkey, shamed Jews everywhere.

As the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, rightly put it: “Taking the law into one’s hands, rioting and committing violence against innocents — this is not our way, and I express my forceful condemnation.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for calm: “I ask that when blood is boiling and the spirit is hot, don’t take the law into your hands.”

Needless to say, the vast majority of settlers do not condone vigilante violence. The mob’s appalling behaviour succeeded only in taking attention away from the murder of the Yaniv brothers.

Extremists exist in every society. The comments of Zvika Fogel, an MK who is a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party, praising the burning of Arab villages “when the army doesn’t act”, had no business in mainstream politics. The Jewish state must be vigilant against extremism in all its manifestations. Its true character was represented by those Israelis who responded by raising £370,000 for the Palestinian victims.