Mastodawn

Before #Iran knocked most other news off the front page, Australian political discourse was dominated last week by finger-pointing, point-scoring and posturing over the so-called #ISISbrides: 11 Australian women who travelled to Syria or Iraq over a decade ago with their husbands allegedly in order to join Islamic State/ISIS. The husbands were all killed or captured by Kurdish/FSA forces, with their wives and children also captured and detained separately. This cohort of 11 women and 23 children has been held in a detention camp for the last 6+ years. The camp has recently changed hands and is in the process of being shut down.

So these women and children are now reportedly trying to return to Australia, The federal government has largely ignored them for years, even though it has a legal obligation to accept their entry as citizens.

The #ALP government, #Coalition (putative) opposition and surging far-right #OneNation have each been engaged in an #Islamophobic race-to-the-bottom, seeking to outdo one another in denunciation & performative cruelty (including towards 23 children—whatever people may think about the terrible decision by their parent(s) a decade ago).

What has been missing from this entire discussion?
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EndemicEarthling Mar 2

How should we feel about an ultra-violent religiously-aligned expansionist project embracing tactics of terror, the massacre of civilians, forced displacement and cultural erasure of non-adherents to expand its 'divinely-mandated' territory while inviting like-minded co-religionists around the world to come and join its forces as they engage in war crimes, sexual violence and mass murder involving the performative desecration and dismemberment of their victims? How should we treat citizens of our own polities that accept that invitation, travel overseas and (likely) join in those crimes (or travel to support those who do)? Are their family members also to be held guilty by association? How should we respond to their co-religionists amongst us, who have repeatedly disavowed such expressions of hatred and dehumanisation as anathema to their faith, but who continue to be linked rhetorically with such criminality by demagogues and who are then tarred in the minds of many as guilty (or at least suspicious) by proximity? What consequences should fall upon domestic organisations that have promoted the talking points of these abhorrent terroristic efforts, or which disseminate propaganda attempting to justify their violence and even recruit further volunteers?
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EndemicEarthling

However you would like to answer these questions with regards to the eleven #ISISbrides, I wonder if your answer is any different when it comes to the 500+ Australian citizens who have travelled to the Middle East in recent years to join another death cult engaged in horrific crimes against civilians, on an even larger scale, in order to keep expanding an even more heavily armed and well-funded religiously-aligned project of domination: the IDF.

During its most intense period of sustained slaughter, lasting around two years from 2014–16, #IslamicState (#ISIS) forces killed over 25,000 people (the precise figure may never be known), the vast majority civilians/non-combatants, with many more wounded, held captive and tortured, or forced to flee, a horrific reign of terror whose effects continue to reverberate across the region a decade later.

During its most intense period of sustained slaughter, lasting around two years from 2023–25, the #IDF killed well over 100,000 people (the precise figure may never be known), the vast majority civilians/non-combatants, with many more wounded, held captive and tortured, or forced to flee, a horrific reign of terror whose violence has not ceased today.
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EndemicEarthling Mar 2

If you're opposed to treating all Jewish people as responsible for the crimes of the Israeli military (as you should be!), why not extend the same standard to Muslim people? If you believe Australians who voluntarily travelled to join #ISIS ought to face legal consequences for that decision, why not extend the same standard to Australian #IDF volunteers? Shouldn't the consequences for individuals or organisations in Australia who propagandised for #IslamicState also be faced by those that continue to whitewash or justify Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine?

And if criticising those Muslims who _do_ actually support ISIS is not inherently #Islamophobic (it is not), then it is also not inherently #antisemitic to criticise those Jewish people (and others) who support the slaughter carried out by the IDF. This is criticising people due to their support for violent, expansionist, exclusivist religious nationalism with a track record of slaughtering civilians, not criticising them for their adherence to a faith tradition or for their ethnic identity.
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EndemicEarthling Mar 2

While we're considering parallels, here's another worth pondering.

There are likely Australian Christians who have travelled overseas to join #ICE or another arm of Trump's #Christofascist expansionist project of violence. It too has been implementing a reign of racialised terror and forced displacement, using (at times) deadly violence, abusive and inhumane treatment of targeted minorities, thumbing its nose at #InternationalLaw, to achieve a form of #EthnicCleansing

Offended by this suggestion? Feel like it's a stretch? Think the #Trump regime has a lower body count than the previous two examples? Obviously it does if you only look at ICE. But perhaps not if you broaden the picture to consider more of the regime's actions.

Add the deaths that have already resulted and continue to mount due to Trump's defunding of the lion's share of international humanitarian work basically overnight, or the likely results of destroying global health cooperation, emboldening #authoritarianism, re-normalising war as the primary means of settling international disputes, and torching any notion of federal US cooperation with global #ClimateAction. The ultimate death toll from these decision are likely to ultimately dwarf the victims of ISIS and Israel combined.