🔗 Share this article

While the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear exactly as they did again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.