Australia to list Hamas and US far-right group as terrorists
17 February 2022, 07:34
The move, announced by Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews, comes amid rising concern about radicalisation of children.
Australia said it has added the US-based far-right extremist group National Socialist Order and plans to add the entirety of the Palestinian group Hamas to its list of outlawed terrorist organisations as concerns rise about radicalised children.
The National Socialist Order, formerly known as Atomwaffen Division, joins Islamist groups Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Hurras al-Din in being added to the list, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said.
Hamas’s military wing, Hamas’ Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has been listed as a terrorist organization since 2003.
The National Socialist Order, which advocates a global “race war” and the collapse of democratic societies, joined the list on Thursday, taking the number of outlawed groups to 28.
The two Islamist groups, both active in the Syrian civil war, will be listed in April.
Ms Andrews has written to state governments to finalise the listing of Hamas as soon as possible.
“The views of Hamas and the violent extremist groups listed today are deeply disturbing, and there is no place in Australia for such views,” she said.
“It’s vital that our laws target not only terrorist acts and terrorists, but also the organisations that plan, finance and carry out these acts,” she added.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett congratulated his Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, on the Hamas decision.
“I thank my friend, Australian PM Scott Morrison, for acting on this issue after the conversation we had on this important matter. It is another important step in the global fight against terror,” Mr Bennett said in a statement.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also thanked Australian Ambassador to Israel Paul Griffiths for what he described as a “significant step” in Israel’s international effort to curtail terrorist organisations.
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said the Hamas listing makes clear Australia’s “absolute rejection of hatred and terrorism”.
“There is absolutely no doubt that Hamas in its entirety meets the definition of terrorist organisation,” he said, adding that the decision aligns Australia with the United States, European Union, Britain and Canada.
The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, a national coalition of Australians who support Palestinian rights, disagreed with Hamas’s political wing being designated a terrorist organisation.
“The government has failed in its duty of searching for a peaceful solution and has shown it applies one set of rules to Palestine and another to Israel,” president Bishop George Browning said.
The Network said in a statement that the designation does nothing to advance the cause of peace and will only create more suffering for the two million people currently living under a 15-year Israeli blockade.
The National Socialist Order is only the third far-right group to be designated a terrorist organisation by Australia.
The Base, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group formed in the US in 2018, was listed in December and the British-based Sonnenkrieg Division was listed in August.
Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the nation’s main domestic spy agency, said last week that pandemic restrictions in Australia have sent online radicalisation “into overdrive” in recent years as isolated people spend more time online.
The proportion of new counter-terrorism investigations involving minors has increased from less than 3% to 15% in only a few years, he said in his annual threat assessment.
At the end of 2021, minors represented more than half of the spy agency’s priority counter-terrorism investigations, he said.
