🔗 Share this article

While Australia winds down for a traditional 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 mood seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right 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 particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of faith.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look exactly as they did again.’

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? 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 quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – 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 yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

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

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and society will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.