🔗 Share this article

As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach 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 significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

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

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred 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 humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

In keeping with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or nature.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other more than ever.

The comfort 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 society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.