🔗 Share this article

While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across 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 horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, 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, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of division from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

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

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

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in politics and society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.