🔗 Share this article

While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow 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 acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water 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 jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively 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 human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.