On the Killings at Bondi, Sydney, and in Providence, Rhode Island

We wish to send our support and care to all those who were injured or affected by the massacre at Bondi Beach and to remember those who were killed.

We also wish to send our support in the same way to those affected by the mass shooting in Providence, where we have dear friends. As I was writing to my friend Kwame Dawes, he was experiencing what was happening at his place of teaching. It was horrific.

 

It is deeply distressing to see political point-scoring taking place when people are suffering such physical pain and emotional trauma. What is obvious is that psychologies of hatred lead to death and misery, and that bigotry has many manifestations. The availability of weapons is a disgrace, and until a central part of the discussion becomes the complete disarming of the world in all capacities — private, military, individual, nation-states and so on — then hatred will find its means of inflicting the most harm it can.

 

Regarding the massacre targeting Jewish people celebrating their faith at Bondi, it is brutally insensitive and bigoted to correlate this with what has happened in the destruction of Gaza. Both are crimes. Both deserve to be understood for the indefensible crimes they are. It seems to me even inappropriate to draw them together in this lament, but others are doing so, will do so, and the situation will be manipulated to suit different agendas and beliefs. But people have died. People have had their loved ones taken from them. Community has been shattered. Our care should be for every person lost, every person affected, and for the broader community. This cannot happen. We are all culpable for failing to nuance social interactions on broader scales to help play down aggression while remaining committed to just causes. Life is the most just of causes, and life has been taken. Every person of Jewish heritage in Australia will feel threatened and vulnerable. This matters. This cannot be, any more than it can be the case for people/s of any heritage.

 

The objectionable correlation of Jewishness with the behaviour of the Israeli military state has become a mode of bigoted convenience for anti-Semites — that’s obvious to anyone who is active in pro-Palestinian causes. To support the Palestinian people does not equate to being anti-Jewish, and yet for some it is a contradictory vehicle for their own hatred. The focus on ‘race’ rather than heritage, on ideology rather than faith, has led to disturbing divisions in the common humanity we all share. We are all humans, we all wish to live decolonised lives, we all wish to survive without physical threat. To kill is the most colonial of acts. Colonialism occurs in shadow as well as overt ways. A murder is a murder.

 

So, our love and care to all those affected and damaged. Society’s purpose is to be non-violent. It’s the world’s purpose, too. Let’s start now. Totally.

 

Proliferating Elegies

 

And this morning we woke

to hear of friends at risk

in Providence, of a scene

unfolding, of a live situation

when there were already deaths.

Across the curve of the world

the news — we are safe

but it is still happening.

The heat was rising

and I went outside

to feel how heavy

the air was already.

Before the storm arrived

I saw a kookaburra

with lightning draped

from its beak. I have written

to seven people over

the last twenty years

to see if they’ve survived

mass shootings.

 

We read that it had been a beautiful day in Sydney

while it was storming here, fire in the forest.

Then people were crying and calling

across time zones, unable

to reach the end of day. We stretch

out a hand as lightning reaches

inside the house into us.

We talk in the dark, waiting

for the lights to come back on.

We learn that the killers

were father and son — that

one of them had held a gun

licence for ten years. That he

had six weapons, all legal,

all accounted for. A father

and son who went to work

killing. A spree. A targeting.

Organised, specific. A ‘mass

casualty’ event. Their family

home is being raided to find

details, to find evidence

for what remains. The hospitals

are full, transfusions

taking place. The sea tests

the beach, as always, as always.

 

 

            John Kinsella