The Immediate Shock and Terror of the Bondi Shooting Is Giving Way to Rage and Discord. We Must Seek Out the Hope.

As the nation settles into for a customary Christmas holiday across languorous days of beach and scorching heat set to the soundtrack of sporting matches and cicada song, this year the nation's summer atmosphere feels, unfortunately, like none before.

It would be a significant understatement to describe the collective disposition after the anti-Jewish terrorist attack on Australian Jews during Bondi Hanukah festivities as one of mere discontent.

Across the country, but especially than in Sydney – the most iconically beautiful of the nation's urban centers – a tenor of initial surprise, grief and terror is segueing to anger and bitter division.

Those who had not picked up on the often voiced concerns of Australian Jews are now highly attuned. Similarly, they are attuned to reconciling the need for a much more immediate, energetic government and institutional crackdown against anti-Jewish hatred with the freedom to peacefully protest against genocide.

If ever there was a time for a national listening, it is now, when our faith in mankind is so sorely depleted. This is especially so for those of us fortunate enough never to have experienced the animosity and dread of religious and ethnic targeting on this land or elsewhere.

And yet the social media feeds keep churning out at us the trite hot takes of those with inflammatory, divisive views but no sense at all of that profound vulnerability.

This is a period when I lament not having a stronger spiritual belief. I lament, because believing in humanity – in mankind’s potential for compassion – has failed us so painfully. Something else, something higher, is required.

And yet from the horror of Bondi we have seen such profound instances of human decency. The courageous acts of ordinary people. The selflessness of bystanders. Emergency personnel – law enforcement and paramedics, those who ran towards the gunfire to aid others, some recognised but for the most part anonymous and unsung.

When the police tape still fluttered wildly all about Bondi, the imperative of social, religious 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 moment of antisemitic slaughter.

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

Togetherness, light and compassion was the message of belief.

And yet elements of the political landscape reacted so nauseatingly quickly with fragmentation, finger-pointing and recrimination.

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

Observe the harmful rhetoric of disunity from longstanding agitators of societal discord, exploiting the massacre before the site was even cold. Then consider the statements of leadership aspirants while the probe was still active.

Politics has a daunting job to do when it comes to bringing together a nation that is mourning and frightened and seeking the hope and, not least, explanations to so many questions.

Like why, when the national terrorism threat level was judged as probable, did such a significant open-air Hanukah event go ahead with such a grossly insufficient protection? Like how could the alleged killers have multiple firearms in the family home when the security agency has so publicly and repeatedly alerted of the threat of antisemitic violence?

How rapidly we were treated to that cliched line (or versions of it) that it’s individuals not weapons that kill. Naturally, each point are true. It’s feasible to simultaneously seek new ways to stop hate-fuelled violence and keep guns away from its potential actors.

In this metropolis of immense beauty, of pristine blue heavens above sea and shore, the ocean and the coastline – 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 horrific violence.

We yearn right now for comprehension and meaning, for loved ones, and perhaps for the solace of aesthetics in art or the natural world.

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

But this is perhaps counterintuitively against instinct. For in these days of fear, anger, sadness, bewilderment and loss we need each other more than ever.

The reassurance of togetherness – the binding force 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 hard to find this extended, enervating summer.