🔗 Share this article

While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities 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, sorrow and terror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or nature.

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

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

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.