The Immediate Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Giving Way to Rage and Division. We Must Look For the Hope.

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

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 fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Unity, light and love was the essence of belief.

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from veteran agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

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

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

The reassurance 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 unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.