The Immediate Shock and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Giving Way to Anger and Division. We Must Seek Out the Hope.

As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of initial shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, 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 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 targeting on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and cultural unity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

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 recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture 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 times of fear, outrage, sadness, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – 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 public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.