🔗 Share this article

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

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

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our public places may not appear quite the same again.’

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

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

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other 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 hard to find this long, enervating summer.