The Initial Impact and Terror of the Bondi Shooting Is Giving Way to Rage and Discord. We Must Look For the Light.

As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, sorrow and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, 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 hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of faith.

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from veteran agitators 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 ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn 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 holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.