Our investigation found we did nothing wrong

The murder of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and five other Western aid workers in an Israeli air strike this week posed at least a mild inconvenience for Israel’s governmental backers. (The murder of their driver, Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, constituted no such inconvenience because he was Palestinian.)

It meant that our biggest media outlets would briefly resume coverage of the genocide, if only to express outrage that Israel treated a white Australian woman like one of the people we usually reserve our bombs for.

Thankfully, the response when an approved instrument of state violence kills someone inconvenient is well-established. Whether it’s the bombing of an aid worker in Gaza or the murder of an Aboriginal child by police, the official response is tried and tested, allowing everyone to go through the motions in double quick time and get on with the rest of their day.

First come the Expressions of Outrage — the phone call to the guilty party, the stern-faced media appearances, and heavy usage of phrases like “completely unacceptable”. They’re designed to generate headlines and thinkpieces from credulous Press Gallery journalists that give the impression that something is being done.