The Immediate Impact and Terror of the Bondi Attack Is Transitioning to Rage and Discord. It Is Imperative We Seek Out the Hope.

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant oversimplification to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tone of initial surprise, grief and horror is segueing to fury and bitter polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a far more urgent, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the freedom to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and love was the message of belief.

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians moved straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene 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 calling off Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other 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 portents are that unity in politics and the community will be hard to find this long, draining summer.