The Initial Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Transitioning to Anger and Discord. It Is Imperative We Look For the Hope.

As the nation winds down for a traditional Christmas holiday across languorous days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer mood feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a significant understatement to characterize the national temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

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

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom 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 especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

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

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who charged into the danger to help others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the police tape still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and ethnic unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing 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.

Unity, hope and love was the essence of faith.

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly quickly with fragmentation, blame and recrimination.

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

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters 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 job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was judged as likely, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate protection? 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 subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound beauty, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other now more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – 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 society will be elusive this extended, draining summer.