Thursday (Sep 3), Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria were worse than Nazis as they “boast about their evil”. He was then slammed by Jewish groups.
“I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it. These people boast about their evil,” Abbott told Sydney commercial radio station 2GB. “This is the extraordinary thing – they act in the way that medieval barbarians acted – only they broadcast it to the world with an effrontery which is hard to credit and it just adds a further dimension to this evil.” His comments were criticised by the head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry Robert Goot as “injudicious and unfortunate”. Goot said in a statement that IS’s crimes were horrific but “cannot be compared to the systematic round-up of millions of people and their dispatch to purpose built death camps for mass murder”. Abbott defended his remarks at a Melbourne press conference later and said he was “not in the business of trying to rank evil”. “But I do make this point, that unlike previous evil-doers, whether we’re talking about Stalin, Hitler or whoever that tried to cover up their evil, this wretched death cult boasts about it,” he said.
Australia joined the US-led campaign against IS in Iraq last year, contributing military jets and special forces troops. The government estimates that some 120 of its nationals are still fighting with IS in Iraq and Syria, while at least 30 have been killed. Another 160 sympathisers are believed to be supporting jihadists from home…..
See full story on channelnewsasia.com
Image: AFP PHOTO / HO / ALBARAKA NEWS