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

While Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of coast and scorching heat accompanied by the background of sporting matches and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere seems, sadly, like none before.

It would be a significant oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish Australians during the beachside Hanukah celebrations as one of simple discontent.

Throughout the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tone of immediate shock, sorrow and horror is segueing to fury and deep division.

Those who had not picked up on the frequently expressed concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are sensitive to reconciling the need for a far more urgent, energetic government and institutional crackdown against antisemitism with the right to demonstrate against mass atrocities.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so deeply diminished. This is particularly so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic persecution on this land or anywhere else.

And yet the algorithms keep churning out at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, divisive stances but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in our potential for kindness – has failed us so acutely. Something else, a greater power, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have witnessed such profound instances of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The bravery of those present. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and medical staff, those who ran towards the gunfire to help fellow humans, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unsung.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the necessity of social, religious and cultural unity was laudably promoted by faith leaders. It was a call of love and acceptance – of bringing together rather than dividing in a time of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the message of faith.

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using tragedy as a calculating opportunity to question Australia’s immigration policies.

Witness the harmful rhetoric of division from veteran agitators 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.

Government has a formidable job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and seeking the hope and, importantly, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a large open-air Hanukah event 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 consistently warned of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were subjected to that cliched argument (or iterations of it) that it’s people not guns that kill. Of course, each point are true. It’s possible to at the same time pursue new ways to prevent violent bigotry and prevent guns away from its possible perpetrators.

In this city of profound splendor, of pristine blue heavens above ocean and shore, the water and the beaches – our communal areas – may not look entirely familiar again to the multitude who’ve noted that famous Bondi seems so jarringly out of place with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

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

This weekend many Australians are calling off holiday gathering plans. Quiet contemplation will feel more in order.

But this is perhaps counterintuitively counterintuitive. For in these days of anxiety, outrage, melancholy, bewilderment and loss we require each other more than ever.

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

But tragically, all of the portents are that cohesion in public life and society will be elusive this long, draining summer.