The Initial Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Giving Way to Rage and Division. We Must Seek Out the Hope.

While the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat set to the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective disposition after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah festivities as one of simple discontent.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate shock, grief and horror is shifting to fury and deep division.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Similarly, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, vigorous government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so deeply depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and fear of faith-based targeting on this land or anywhere else.

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

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for compassion – has let us down so acutely. A different source, something higher, is required.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound examples of human goodness. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who charged into the gunfire to aid fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the police tape still waved wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of community, religious and ethnic solidarity was laudably championed by faith leaders. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a time of targeted violence.

In keeping with the symbolism of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate evocation of the need for lightness.

Unity, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

And yet segments of the political landscape reacted so disgustingly swiftly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some politicians gravitated straight for the pessimism, using the atrocity as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s migration rules.

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the attack before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider 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 grieving and frightened and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a significant public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the residence when the security agency has so openly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Naturally, both things are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to stop violent bigotry and prevent firearms away from its possible actors.

In this city of profound beauty, of clear azure skies above ocean and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look quite the same again to the multitude who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We long right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

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 times of anxiety, outrage, sadness, bewilderment and grief we need each other now more than ever.

The comfort of togetherness – the binding force 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 elusive this extended, enervating summer.