The Immediate Impact and Fear of the Bondi Attack Is Giving Way to Anger and Discord. We Must Seek Out the Light.

As Australia settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across slow-moving days of beach and scorching heat set to the background of Test cricket and insect sounds, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, sadly, like none before.

It would be a dramatic oversimplification to describe the collective temperament after the anti-Jewish violent assault on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere ennui.

Across the country, but nowhere more so than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of Australian cities – a tone of immediate shock, grief and horror is segueing to anger and deep polarization.

Those who had previously missed the often voiced fears of the Jewish community are now acutely aware. Just as, they are sensitive to balancing the need for a much more immediate, energetic official crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the right to demonstrate against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a countrywide dialogue, it is now, when our belief in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us lucky never to have experienced the hatred and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this continent or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep spewing at us the banal instant opinions of those with blistering, polarizing views but little understanding at all of that profound fragility.

This is a time when I lament not having a greater spiritual belief. I mourn, because having faith in people – in mankind’s potential for kindness – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such extreme examples of human decency. The heroism of individuals. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some publicly hailed but for the most part unnamed and unheralded.

When the barrier cordon still fluttered in the wind all about Bondi, the necessity of social, faith-based and cultural unity was admirably championed by faith leaders. It was a call of compassion and tolerance – of unifying rather than splitting apart in a moment of targeted violence.

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

Togetherness, hope and compassion was the essence of belief.

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

Some politicians moved straight for the darkness, using the atrocity as a calculating chance to question Australia’s migration rules.

Witness the dangerous message of division from veteran agitators of societal discord, capitalizing on the massacre before the site was even cold. Then read the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Government has a formidable task to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and scared and looking for the light and, not least, answers to so many uncertainties.

Like why, when the official terror alert was assessed as probable, did such a large public Hanukah event 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 openly and consistently alerted of the danger of antisemitic violence?

How quickly we were subjected to that tired line (or iterations of it) that it’s individuals not guns that cause death. Of course, each point are true. It’s feasible to at the same time seek new ways to stop violent bigotry and keep firearms away from its possible actors.

In this metropolis of immense splendor, of pristine azure skies above ocean and shore, the water and the coastline – our shared community spaces – may not seem quite the same again to the many who’ve observed that iconic Bondi seems so incongruous with last weekend’s horrific bloodshed.

We long right now for understanding and significance, for family, and perhaps for the consolation of aesthetics in culture or nature.

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

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

The comfort of togetherness – 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 elusive this extended, draining summer.