🔗 Share this article

As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

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

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.