🔗 Share this article

While the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding 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 our capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

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

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.