🔗 Share this article

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, unfortunately, like none before.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and horror is shifting to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the pessimism, 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, capitalizing on the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, 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 likely need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be elusive this long, enervating summer.