As Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like no other.
It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.
Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.
Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.
If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.
And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing stances but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.
This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is required.
And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.
When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.
Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (light amid darkness), there was so much fitting evocation of the need for hope.
Togetherness, hope and love was the message of faith.
‘Our shared community spaces may not appear quite the same again.’
And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.
Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.
Observe the harmful message of division from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the probe was ongoing.
Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.
Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?
How rapidly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.
In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.
We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in art or the natural world.
This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.
But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other now more than ever.
The reassurance of community – the binding force of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.
But tragically, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.
