The Immediate Impact and Terror of the Bondi Shooting Is Giving Way to Rage and Discord. It Is Imperative We Look For the Hope.

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and terror is shifting to anger and bitter division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred 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 especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting 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 no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a stronger faith. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and ethnic solidarity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and love was the message of faith.

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

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was ongoing.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or versions of it) that it’s people not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s feasible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of clear azure skies above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We yearn right now for understanding and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in culture or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we need 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 tragically, all of the portents are that unity in public life and the community will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.