The Initial Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Transitioning to Anger and Discord. We Must Seek Out the Hope.

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi 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 bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so deeply 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 anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with blistering, divisive views but no sense at all of that terrifying fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in humanity – in our potential for compassion – has let us down so painfully. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror 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 charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and ethnic unity was laudably promoted by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for hope.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

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

Some elected officials moved straight for the pessimism, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the investigation was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking 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 event go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and consistently warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s people not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that iconic 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 culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Quiet contemplation will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we require each other now more than ever.

The comfort 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 hard to find this extended, draining summer.