🔗 Share this article

As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

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 lucky never to have experienced the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.