🔗 Share this article

As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

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

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

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, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

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

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

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

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

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