🔗 Share this article

As the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is especially 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 social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, 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 bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not look quite the same again.’

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty 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 times of fear, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

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

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