The Immediate Shock and Terror of the Bondi Attack Is Giving Way to Rage and Division. We Must Seek Out the Light.

While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews 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, sorrow and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against antisemitism 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 sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, polarizing views but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential 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 paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the words of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were treated to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point 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 beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the water and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve observed that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – 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 society will be elusive this long, enervating summer.