🔗 Share this article

While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.