The Immediate Shock and Terror of the Bondi Shooting Is Transitioning to Anger and Discord. It Is Imperative We Look For the Light.

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat accompanied by the background of Test cricket and cicada song, this year the country’s summer atmosphere seems, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the national disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is shifting to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic official fight against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive views but little understanding at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater faith. I lament, because believing in people – in our capacity for compassion – has failed us so painfully. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme instances of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who charged into the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, faith-based and cultural unity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of love and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a moment of antisemitic slaughter.

Consistent with the meaning of the Festival of Lights (light amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

Some politicians gravitated straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then read the statements of political figures while the investigation was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and looking for the light and, importantly, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully inadequate security presence? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the family home when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that kill. Of course, both things are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the water and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the many who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for loved ones, and perhaps for the consolation of beauty in culture or the natural world.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, anger, sadness, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in politics and society will be hard to find this long, enervating summer.