Why did it take violent deaths for our fears to be acknowledged? |
At what point does allyship cease to be empathetic and instead become performative? In Australia, gun violence is not part of our daily life. Its sudden emergence has shocked us into searching for simple explanations for far more fractured tensions among friends and family since October 7.
Mourners have created a floral tribute to the victims at the Bondi Pavilion.Credit: Jessica Hromas
For many in the Jewish community, fear did not begin with this shooting. Since October 7, 2023, a persistent sense of vulnerability and anxiety has accompanied daily life. Sometimes this has been expressed quietly and met with dismissal. Others have described this fear as exaggerated, even hysterical. Without immediate and localised violence, it was treated as a global narrative rather than a reality faced by everyday Australian Jews. Then a shooting occurs on the first night of Hanukkah, a time meant to honour resilience and light, then suddenly that fear becomes undeniable.
It is a familiar pattern we have seen in which human societies struggle to take invisible or abstract threats seriously. History shows that belief is rarely extended pre-emptively but is granted retroactively and once the harm becomes visible enough to command attention. Until then, fear is negotiable and even weaponised, resulting in fractured friendship where trust dissolves.
We have seen this before, most recently during COVID. The pandemic did not only test public health systems. It tested relationships. Friendships,........