EDITORIAL: As a nation we must choose light over hate
As dawn broke at the end of our nation’s darkest week in decades, thousands gathered at Bondi Beach in a powerful expression of grief, solidarity and defiance.
They were there to reclaim their beach from the sorrow and terror that has overwhelmed it since Sunday. They were there to pay their respects to the 15 souls we have lost and to say to those who hate our way of life that we will not give in to their evil.
This has been a week of the deepest grief, for all Australians, but in particular for our nation’s 116,000-strong Jewish community. For many within that community, their grief has been tinged with fury that more was not done to prevent this loss of life; that their repeated and desperate warnings about escalating anti-Semitism were ignored, their fears waved off.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.On Thursday, Anthony Albanese finally accepted some responsibility for those failures.
“Governments aren’t perfect, I’m not perfect,” the Prime Minister said.
It is not in Mr Albanese’s nature to make concessions of failure. It took days of pressure — including public shamings from Josh Frydenberg and John Howard — for him to yield to this minor degree.
Even now, the Government is sticking by its instinct to dig in by resisting calls for a royal commission into Sunday’s carnage. Senior ministers including Tony Burke and Jim Chalmers say they do not want to risk delaying the response to the attack by tying up agencies with the administrative burden of a royal commission.
The need for a royal commission is as blindingly apparent as the Bondi morning sun. An inquiry must investigate the attack itself, whether security agencies missed opportunities to stop it, and how the anti-Semitic beliefs which incubated it were allowed to gain a foothold in our society.
Yet the Government wants to keep us in the dark. Mr Albanese says he is prepared to take “whatever action is necessary” to confront and root out anti-Semitism. Except, it seems, to risk embarrassment to his Government through a thorough and public review.
Undoubtedly, the onus is on our governments and institutions to lead this fight against hatred and radical beliefs.
But do not underestimate the power each of us holds as an individual.
We saw the truth of that in the most literal sense through the courageous actions of Ahmed Al Ahmed, who has rightly been lauded a hero for disarming one of the killers.
Many others also put themselves in harm’s way to save the lives of others. Some — Reuven Morrison, and Boris and Sofia Gurman — paid with their own.
We seek out these stories of heroism not to distract ourselves from the horror but because it is one of the most powerful things we can do right now. They remind us that there is strength in goodness.
Mercifully, few of us will be called upon in our lives to make such dramatic shows of our goodness. Instead, we can show it in smaller ways — by reflecting on the Australia we are today and the Australia we want to become.
Like the surfers who paddled out into the Bondi waves at daybreak on Friday, we can choose to charge into the light.
