The Immediate Shock and Fear of the Bondi Shooting Is Transitioning to Rage and Division. We Must Look For the Light.

While Australia settles into for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and bitter polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional 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 humanity is so deeply depleted. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound 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 help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

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

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

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

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

Witness the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long 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 holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need 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 sadly, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.