Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visits Bondi hero Ahmed Al-Ahmed at his hospital bedside. Photo: PMO.
What will we remember most from the appalling events of Sunday 14 December at Bondi Beach?
Will it be the grim image of a gunman on a bridge firing remorselessly into the crowd, or the impossibly heroic actions of Ahmed Al-Ahmed charging at one of the shooters and disarming him?
I believe it will be the latter.
As his name suggests Ahmed is not Jewish, but Syrian. For him, who he was or who they were did not matter. Human beings were being harmed and that was enough for him to act.
In Christmas week, it might serve us well to put aside the indulgences of the festival to reflect on the acts of courage and sacrifice that emerged during and in the aftermath of that explosion of hate that has so far taken 16 lives, including one of the alleged perpetrators.
For at the root of these courageous acts was love – for humanity, our way of life, for life itself.
Since then there has been an understandable outpouring of grief and anguish. Bitter blame is being directed at the police and government for failing to protect Jewish people.
That too is understandable.
But riding that shock wave have been opportunists quick to use these terrible events to justify long-held agendas.
Instead of helping a traumatised nation come together, they seek to divide. Instead of measured responses, they magnify the clamour. Instead of supporting more gun control, they call it a diversion.
They once again point to the “other”, attacking an immigration system that “imports hate”, yet remain silent when home-grown hate in the form of Nazis – no friends of Jewish people – help organise anti-immigration rallies.
They talk about the Judeo-Christian tradition, yet fail to understand the message of the good Samaritan, an outsider who had no cause to render aid to the man waylaid by robbers, but did.
There should be no place in our country for the language and actions of hate, but we also need to find more room for the language and actions of love.
Jesus said: Love one another. But this can be the most difficult commandment to obey.
In times like these, when two heavily armed men consumed with hate for what they were convinced was the enemy could do so much damage, love can be overwhelmed by anger, fear and need for revenge.
That is the cycle of violence in which humanity appears locked.
Of course, there are hard questions to be asked, tough preventative responses to be made and people to be protected but these things should be done out of love – for all our citizens, our institutions and freedoms – not in fear or retribution.
To respond otherwise only inflicts even more damage on our country, corrodes our culture and divides our people.
The path of love is not easy. It is a long road but in the end it is the only one that matters.
Happy Christmas.
