🔗 Share this article

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, 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 animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds 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 potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

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

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, 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 feel more appropriate.

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

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.