🔗 Share this article

While Australia 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 mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the light and, importantly, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

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

The comfort of community – 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 elusive this long, draining summer.