Zomi and her colleagues were saving lives. Their deaths deserve our outrage

‘Zomi and her colleagues did not look away. They were not impotent nor paralysed. They put their lives on the line.’ Photograph: World Central Kitchen/Reuters

Zomi Frankcom was only 43. She was one of our finest Australians. Self-giving, courageous and compassionate; in her life we see the expression of the deepest and truest values of what we aspire to be, indeed, of what it should mean to be an Australian.

Her death along with six other aid colleagues from World Central Kitchen should never have happened. World Central Kitchen had done everything right in communicating clearly with the IDF their plans for food delivery and displaying their logos clearly. An IDF spokesperson acknowledged this, saying World Central Kitchen had responded to Israel’s needs also. They were humanitarian and neutral.