The Immediate Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Transitioning to Anger and Discord. It Is Imperative We Seek Out the Light.

While the nation winds down for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and blistering heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the country’s summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like no other.

It would be a dramatic understatement to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of mere discontent.

Throughout the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, vigorous official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to peacefully protest against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our belief in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of faith-based targeting on this land or elsewhere.

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

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because believing in people – in mankind’s capacity for kindness – has failed us so acutely. A different source, something higher, is needed.

And yet from the atrocity of Bondi we have witnessed such extreme examples of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. First responders – police officers and medical staff, those who ran towards the danger to aid 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 social, religious and cultural solidarity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the meaning of Hanukah (illumination amid gloom), there was so much appropriate reference of the need for hope.

Togetherness, hope and love was the essence of belief.

And yet elements of the Australian polity reacted so nauseatingly swiftly with division, blame and recrimination.

Some elected officials gravitated straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a cynical opportunity to challenge Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from longstanding fomenters of Australian racial division, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the words of political figures while the probe was ongoing.

Politics has a daunting task to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and scared and seeking the light and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a woefully insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have multiple firearms in the residence when the domestic intelligence organisation has so publicly and consistently alerted of the danger of targeted attacks?

How quickly we were treated to that tired line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that cause death. Of course, both things are valid. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to prevent hate-fuelled violence and keep firearms away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of profound splendor, of clear blue heavens above ocean and shore, the ocean and the beaches – our shared community spaces – may not seem entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific violence.

We long 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. Reflective solitude will feel more appropriate.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of anxiety, anger, melancholy, bewilderment and grief we require 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 sadly, all of the indicators are that unity in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.