🔗 Share this article

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. 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 algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, 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 danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we require 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 indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.