🔗 Share this article

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound 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 kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Witness the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now 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 unity in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.