🔗 Share this article

As the nation settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury 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 attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of faith-based targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

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

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

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

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, 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 in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion 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 portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.