🔗 Share this article

As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful message of division from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.

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

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