The Immediate Shock and Terror of the Bondi Shooting Is Giving Way to Rage and Division. It Is Imperative We Look For the Light.

While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday during slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer mood seems, unfortunately, like none before.

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

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most postcard picturesque of Australian cities – a tenor of immediate surprise, grief and terror is segueing to fury and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Just as, they are attuned to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against antisemitism with the right to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a moment for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in humanity is so sorely diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have endured the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep spewing at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that terrifying vulnerability.

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

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human goodness. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the danger to aid fellow humans, some recognised but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still waved in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably championed by religious figures. It was a message of compassion and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a moment of targeted violence.

Consistent with the symbolism of the Festival of Lights (illumination amid darkness), there was so much fitting reference of the need for lightness.

Togetherness, light and compassion was the essence of faith.

And yet segments of the Australian polity responded so disgustingly swiftly with division, finger-pointing and recrimination.

Some elected officials moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a cynical opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Observe the harmful message of disunity from veteran fomenters of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the crime scene was even cold. Then consider the statements of political figures while the probe was still active.

Politics has a formidable job to do when it comes to uniting a nation that is grieving and frightened and looking for the hope and, importantly, answers to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was assessed as likely, did such a large open-air Hanukah celebration go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the accused attackers have six guns in the residence when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly warned of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired argument (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and keep guns away from its possible actors.

In this city of immense beauty, of pristine azure skies above sea and sand, the ocean and the coastline – 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 obscene bloodshed.

We yearn 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 calling off Christmas party plans. Reflective solitude will seem more in order.

But this is perhaps somewhat counterintuitive. For in these times of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, confusion and grief we need each other now more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and the community will be elusive this extended, enervating summer.