🔗 Share this article

While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions 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 spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror 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 paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

And yet elements of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

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

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of community – 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 extended, enervating summer.