🔗 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 insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing 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 faith in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (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 look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times 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 tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.