The Immediate Shock and Terror of the Bondi Attack Is Transitioning to Anger and Discord. We Must Look For the Hope.

While Australia winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of initial surprise, sorrow and terror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

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

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because having faith in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has let us down so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

And yet segments of the Australian polity reacted so disgustingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful message of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and looking for the hope and, not least, explanations to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that cliched line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that cause death. Of course, both things are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we require each other more than ever.

The reassurance of community – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in politics and the community will be elusive this long, draining summer.