The Murdoch press is directing a straight-to-video thriller about Australian citizens returning from Syrian displaced person camps, where they have been languishing since 2019. Dozens of media outlets were waiting at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport to film the arrival of the handful of women and children in early May, while tabloids published photographs of their plane landing side by side with those of women wearing hijabs, in imagery intended to evoke 9/11.
Publications from the Herald Sun and Sydney Morning Herald to the ABC and New York Times refer to these women as “ISIS Brides”, demonstrating how acceptable racism towards Muslims is among the establishment media. Those outlets would not countenance labelling the families of Australian citizens who fight with the Israeli army, for example, “IDF Wives”. The same people who lecture us about supporting Israel in the name of “social cohesion” are publicly crucifying Australian citizens for little more than being Muslim.
Compare the treatment of these women today with 2019, when then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, an architect of Australia’s policy of turning back boats carrying refugees, facilitated the return of families from Syria on the reasonable basis that doing so was their legal right as citizens, and it was not fair for their children to grow up in camps. This generated very little uproar.
But today, after years of Israeli genocide in Gaza, violence against Muslims and people from the Middle East is back in vogue. Pauline Hanson is able to declare there are “no good Muslims” without significant pushback or electoral consequence. Meanwhile, One Nation, the Liberals and the Nationals are in full swing denouncing immigration, and especially immigrants who “don’t share our values” (i.e. Muslims), as an existential threat.
The irony is that the women who have been trapped in Syria aren’t even immigrants. They are Australian citizens. In his response to the 2026 budget, Angus Taylor told the Australian parliament that welfare should be withheld from new migrants (which it already is) because “citizenship has got to mean something. We want people to aspire to be citizens of Australia”. But citizenship has not assisted any of the women or children currently returning or still trapped abroad, or saved them from savage vilification.
Taylor has even denounced the children—also citizens—raised in Syrian camps, saying on 3 March they “pose a risk to Australia because of the hate which has undoubtedly filled their minds”. It is unimaginable that such statements would be made about the children of Christian fundamentalists from the United States, or the children of Israeli settlers, who likewise grow up in hate-filled environments but are welcome here.
And while there is yet to be any evidence presented that these women were responsible for crimes against humanity in Syria, there is plenty of evidence of such crimes being supported and aided by the Australian government, along with most of the rest of the political class.
In addition to the unspeakable genocide in Gaza over the last more than two years, the Australian government has enthusiastically supported the United States’ barbarous war on Iran and Lebanon, and many more murderous Middle East wars before that which have claimed millions of lives.
Every accusation made against the “ISIS Brides”—that they support a bloody, barbaric, terrorist organisation—could equally be made against supporters of Israel. Paul Gregoire, writing for Sydney Criminal Lawyers on 13 May, aptly compares the media circus about “ISIS Brides” to the silence regarding Australians fighting for the IDF who have volunteered to take part in a genocide.
And what mainstream politician has denounced Ben Roberts-Smith’s attendance at ANZAC Day ceremonies, despite his war crimes that he is currently facing charges for? Instead some, like former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, have expressed sympathy for him. Apparently it is not barbarism to murder a man and then drink beer from his prosthetic leg so long as you’re draped in the Australian flag.
And what of the Australian state’s claim to defend women, a core pretext of various episodes of Western meddling in the Middle East over the last few decades? The misogyny of ISIS is well known, which means women being able to act with agency and independently of the wishes of their husbands cannot be assumed. Indeed, according to ABC journalist Sara Tomevska, of the women who returned to Australia from Syrian camps prior to 2026, only one was arrested for knowingly entering an area controlled by ISIS, and that woman was found to have been coerced by her husband.
The imperial ideology of “defending women” applies only when it comes to fighting wars against economic and military rivals, not when it comes to preventing Australian citizens from living in squalid camps. Albanese has shown no sympathy to these women, repeatedly saying that the “ISIS brides” (and their children) deserve it, for having “made the decision” to travel to the Middle East more than a decade ago.
These women are being cast as the sinister criminals and violators of human rights by the very people who should be being charged for crimes against humanity. Instead, supporters of industrial-scale genocide and violence in the Middle East are whingeing about how they are victims, at a Royal Commission established by a Labor government that agrees with them and wants to legitimise the same crimes. The absurd hypocrisy of capitalism knows no limits.
