The Immediate Impact and Fear of the Bondi Shooting Is Transitioning to Anger and Division. We Must Look For the Light.

While Australia winds down for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of beach and blistering heat accompanied by the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to characterize the national temperament after the antisemitic violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah celebrations as one of simple ennui.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of initial shock, grief and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official fight 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 particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the hatred and fear of religious and ethnic persecution on this continent or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but no sense at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a greater faith. I mourn, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to help others, some publicly hailed but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the imperative of community, faith-based and ethnic unity was admirably promoted by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and tolerance – of bringing together rather than splitting apart in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

In keeping with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid darkness), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for lightness.

Unity, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

And yet elements of the political landscape responded so disgustingly quickly with division, finger-pointing and accusation.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating chance to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the dangerous rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of Australian racial division, capitalizing on the attack before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

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

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as likely, did such a large public Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly inadequate security presence? Like how could the alleged killers have six guns in the family home when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the danger of targeted attacks?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s possible to simultaneously pursue new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and prevent guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above sea and sand, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s obscene violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for family, and perhaps for the solace of beauty in culture or nature.

This weekend many Australians are cancelling holiday gathering plans. Reflective solitude will seem more appropriate.

But this is perhaps somewhat against instinct. For in these times of anxiety, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we require each other now more than ever.

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

But sadly, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be hard to find this extended, draining summer.