The Immediate Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Giving Way to Anger and Discord. We Must Look For the Light.

As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the collective disposition after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple ennui.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, 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 experienced the animosity and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because having faith in people – in our potential for kindness – has let us down so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and paramedics, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Unity, hope and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

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

Observe the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on 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 bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

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

In this city of immense splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – 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 comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this long, draining summer.