“Just turn the heat down; dial down the rhetoric”, Labor PM Anthony Albanese keeps saying.

This mantra, dutifully parroted by other ministers in his cabinet, is grossly hypocritical because he and his government are simultaneously fanning the flames of racism and division.

Labor’s handling of the so-called “ISIS brides” issue is just the latest example.

For years, the Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria/Rojava has been appealing to Australia, and other countries, to take their own citizens among the Islamic State terrorists, and their families, off their hands.

From a legal, human rights and justice perspective, that was the right thing to do.

The world’s richest countries were far better resourced to repatriate their citizens who had gone to the brutal “caliphate” that ISIS ran in the region than the Rojava freedom fighters who sacrificed many thousands of lives to defeat ISIS.

The Rojava administration appealed to the rich countries to set up mechanisms to hold the ISIS terrorists to account and ensure that justice was done. But it was ignored and Rojava was denied recognition, and left to deal with the mess with........

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