"The Bondi attack was an unutterably cruel event, all the more horrifying for being ours, and we can't stop ourselves saying so. It is a sword that fell on the necks of two sets of Australians. Yet again, young Australian Jews will be asking parents why they are hated, and that is heartbreaking. In a different sense, so will young Muslims."
"During their apparent sojourn in a Campsie B&B, the alleged terrorists could not have been confident of their own survival, but they must have been confident in producing a reaction. It is a matter of civic pride that a Muslim man accosted one of the gunmen and took a weapon from him; a matter of a small yelp of praise and gratitude amid the cruelty."
The Bondi attack inflicted profound cruelty affecting both Jewish and Muslim Australians and provoked deep pain among young people questioning communal safety. The alleged attackers likely sought to provoke a reaction rather than ensure their own survival, and a Muslim bystander’s disarming of a gunman provided a brief moment of civic courage. Public instinct inclines toward blaming politicians, yet such savagery exposes limitations in democratic capacity to prevent or punish extreme violence. Questions arise about the father’s legal firearms and why so many were available. Political arguments about two-state versus one-state solutions are invoked but do not clearly explain the attackers’ motives.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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