🔗 Share this article

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish 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 tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, 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 national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and accusation.

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

Observe the dangerous message of division from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, 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 unity in politics and the community will be elusive this extended, draining summer.