The Erosion of Australia’s Responsibility to Its People: ISIS Brides, IDF Returnees and Gaza Activists

Four Australian women and nine children, known collectively as the “ISIS brides”, arrived back in Australia on 7 May 2026. Three of the women were promptly charged and remanded over domestic crimes that carry universal jurisdiction, which stands in stark contrast to the potentially hundreds of locals who’ve returned from fighting in a UN declared genocide as part of the Israeli Defence Forces.

The Australian government has a responsibility to charge the ISIS women with these historic crimes related to slavery and terrorism offences, however in terms of citizens and residents returning from fighting in the Gaza genocide, this responsibility is not being actioned. Australian IDF fighters don’t appear to be whisked away for any alleged acts, and participation in genocide is a crime bar none.

The lack of awareness of what is being done about returning IDF fighters compared to the commotion about women returning from a Syrian refugee camp has many reasons. The ISIS-linked women were involved with an entity Australia determines as a terrorist organisation, whilst returning IDF members served in the military of an ally, which is perpetrating a genocide and other atrocities.

Australian intelligence is obviously monitoring local IDF members, however no measures have been taken against them in terms of participating in an massive breach of international and domestic laws, whilst another aspect of nonaction on Australian involvement in Israel’s illegal actions is the fact that no Australian entity has condemned the IDF for recently kidnapping and brutalising six Australians.

All three of these distinct scenarios should be of concern for Australians, even those banging the white nationalist/antiimmigration drum at present, because they all display a weakening of the manner in which the government is taking responsibility for citizens and residents, which erodes citizenship itself, as well as what sort of protection one can expect from government as an Australian.

Dwindling responsibilities

The debate around the return of the women, who were married to men who illegally travelled overseas to fight with ISIS, and their children is a case in point for how Australian citizenship is being undermined at present.

The right of an Australian to return to the country has long been established in Australian common law, the Migration Act 1958 recognises this, as does article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Thirty one Australian women and children, or ISIS brides, have returned prior to this latest cohort, and 29 of them had been assisted in repatriation by the government, while there are at least 20 more Australians now seeking to return from Syria.

Yet, the debate around these latest returnees, which flared up in February, confirmed non-assistance and saw the flagging of denial of return.

When the PM appeared before the press on 22 February 2026 and was questioned on the 13 citizens seeking to return from Syria, the 14 December 2025 Bondi Beach massacre having been perpetrated by ISIS-affiliated murderers had intensified the debate, and Anthony Albanese was clear that he wouldn’t be assisting their return like the Coalition had in respect of “ISIS brides” in 2019.

The foreign minister reiterated this position on 27 April, stating that Labor wouldn’t be assisting them and that they’d “face the full force of the law” if they returned. Yet, Penny Wong failed to mention that assistance would allow for the application of the law in respect of their alleged crimes, whilst Greens Senator David Shoebridge pointed out that this all involved not assisting innocent kids.

Shoebridge described the denial of assistance to these Australian children, and further the Coalition’s calls to prevent their return, as a betrayal of “core human values”, and he further explained that when then PM Scott Morrison had assisted in repatriating eight ISIS-related kids in 2019, he agreed, and the top minister had even ensured “the welfare and support needs of each child” be provided.

Ex-PM Morrison was an ultraconservative politician. So, his repatriation effort too reveals just how steep a decline the strength of citizenship has taken, along with government responsibilities to its citizens. This is also compounded when considering that the Albanese government itself repatriated four women and 13 children from their detainment in a Syrian camp in relation to their ISIS links.

Murderers roam free

The media furore and reactionary debate over whether women and children returning from years stuck in detainment and then refugee camps in Syria, is distinctly differing from how the mainstream press and the political establishment are reacting to the involvement of Australian citizens in the yearslong genocide and mass commission of atrocities, which have been taking place in Gaza.

Since October 2023, the issue has been periodically approached in the press and has failed to be adequately addressed by the federal government. The Australian Border Force said in late 2023 that it was aware of four Australians having left the country to join the IDF, and it had intervened with three of them. And the Guardian explained that did not mean they were stopped or discouraged.

Australian Centre for International Justice executive director Rawan Arraf has been vocal on Australians taking part in the genocide, which guarantees commission of international crimes, and she’s too underscored that our domestic law requires the active inquiring into these soldiers for such crimes. Yet, this is not happening, so the ACIJ has itself been investigating and identifying returnees.

This lack of concern about Australians potentially having participated in barbaric crimes has been revealed by our top ministers failing to raise the issue, as well as by the press hardly reporting on it, and this appears to be simply because Israel is an allied nation.

But the issue is that in allowing people who have just engaged in unbridled violence to live amongst the community without concern is a dereliction of the government’s responsibility to keep the public safe.

When Australians have returned from Islamic extremist environments overseas, governments have ensured they undertake funded programs to be rehabilitated, and this has been for the protection of the entire community.

So, allowing potential genocide perpetrators to roam the streets is a clear dropping of the ball by government in terms of all Australians, and there’s evidence that this is already negatively impacting.

Let them eat cake

But the understanding that the Australian government is increasingly withdrawing what had been understood as its responsibilities towards its constituents entailed in the examples of the ISIS brides and the IDF returnees is further compounded when considering that Israel has twice kidnapped six Australians in six months, and our top ministers have said nothing.

Six Australians were taken hostage on the high seas nearby Greece at semiautomatic gunpoint on 30 April this year. They were then held on a prison ship for two days and brutalised. The PM and foreign minister said nothing, which was shocking but not unfamiliar, as the IDF kidnapped six Australians at sea near Gaza last October, and detained and harmed them, with no official reaction then either.

Much of the public has been dumbfounded by these developments, as these Australian citizens had committed no crimes, they were in international waters and they were unarmed. The second kidnapping involved 180-odd foreign nationals taken more than 600 nautical miles outside of Israel’s claimed waters, yet this did not and has not resulted in a peep from Albanese or Wong.

The only explanation for this, according to many commentators, is that our nation’s alliance to the Trump White House and the power the US holds over its vassal state of Australia has left the Australian Labor Party and its prime minister and foreign minister powerless to speak out against any issue it may have with Washington, and by extension with Israel.

However, Greens Senator David Shoebridge told Sydney Criminal Lawyers this week that this reading misunderstands modern Labor”, which is “quite comfortable with Israel behaving like this, with the solid backing of Washington”.

“They have signed onto a global project, while Washington, its allies and proxies, literally do whatever they like, wherever they like,” the lawmaker elaborated on Monday this week. “This is part of modern Labor’s worldview of how the world works.”

This assessment of modern Labor and its ministers not actively seeking to condemn its allies in their mistreatment of its own citizens being due to the government actually being in agreeance with how this is all playing out in terms of the greater project of empire, takes the understanding of how far the relationship between the Australian state and its people has eroded to a new depth.

“We have seen twice in just six months that when the Albanese Labor government has to choose between the rights and protections of Australian citizens or quietly bowing their head to Washington, they are literally kneeling before Trump, or, whoever Trump is supporting, which in this case is Benjamin Netanyahu,” Shoebridge added in regard to the kidnappings on the high seas.

“This is a continuing theme, where, literally, the prime minister, the foreign minister and the defence minister cannot distinguish between the interests of the United States and the interests of Australians, and that is a gross breach of trust with the Australian public,” the senator added.