🔗 Share this article

While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

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

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope 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 event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.