🔗 Share this article

While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely 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 elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

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

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – 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 obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

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

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

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