🔗 Share this article

As Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

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

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration 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 iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics 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 against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

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