🔗 Share this article

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

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

Observe the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.