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

While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during languorous days of coast and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

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

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and horror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have endured the hatred and dread of faith-based persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite instant opinions of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I regret not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, a greater power, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to help fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of community, religious and cultural solidarity was admirably championed by religious figures. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly quickly with division, blame 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 disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a daunting job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

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 insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so openly and consistently warned of the threat of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, each point are valid. It’s possible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its potential perpetrators.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the coastline – our communal areas – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene bloodshed.

We long right now for comprehension and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of fear, anger, melancholy, confusion and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the human glue of the unity in the very word – is what we probably need most.

But tragically, all of the indicators are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, enervating summer.