The Initial Shock and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Transitioning to Rage and Division. It Is Imperative We Look For the Hope.

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, sorrow and terror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic official fight against antisemitism 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 mankind is so deeply diminished. 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 continent or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of belief.

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the dangerous message of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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 calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we likely need most.

But sadly, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.