🔗 Share this article

While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective disposition 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 Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is shifting to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous official 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 mankind is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I regret not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, light and compassion was the message of belief.

‘Our shared community spaces may not look quite the same again.’

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and accusation.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as likely, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and consistently alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible 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 immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean 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 bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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 days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and grief we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.