🔗 Share this article

While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. 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 (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

‘Our public places may not look exactly as they did again.’

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words 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 scared and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

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

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

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