The Initial Shock and Fear of the Bondi Shooting Is Transitioning to Rage and Discord. We Must Seek Out the Light.

While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of mere ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional fight against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the banal hot takes of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. First responders – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was admirably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and tolerance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Unity, hope and love was the message of belief.

And yet segments of the political landscape responded so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the words of political figures while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of pristine azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look quite the same again to the many who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long 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 holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now 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 indicators are that cohesion in politics and the community will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.