Truth isn’t divisive. Cowardice is

It is often said that truth is the first casualty of war. But in modern Australia, we might now say it is accountability that dies first, especially when the war comes not from without but from within.

On December 14th, blood was spilled on Bondi Beach. Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. Literally. Jews, gathered to mark Hanukkah, a festival that commemorates the survival of a people, were gunned down in a deliberate, ideologically motivated attack. This was not a random act of violence. It was not “senseless.” It was surgical. Premeditated. Antisemitic to its core.

The Prime Minister, predictably, lit a candle and murmured platitudes about community healing and national unity. And when the families of the dead requested a Royal Commission, one of the last tools left in a civilised society for establishing the truth, he declined.

Why? Because it might be too “divisive.”

Let us pause to examine that word. “Divisive” is now the sacred incantation by which our leaders ward off the responsibility of moral courage. It is deployed to smother legitimate inquiry, to stifle dissent, and to render the victims of violence invisible under the banner of “social cohesion.”

But what, precisely, is more divisive than the refusal to investigate the mass murder of citizens on your own soil?

The Jewish community did not call for vengeance. They called for answers. For clarity. For truth. And in return, they were offered a candlelight vigil and the implicit message that some Australians are more equal than others. Some massacres warrant Royal Commissions. Others warrant quiet grieving, and then, silence.

This is not leadership. It is appeasement.

It reveals something truly unsettling. That our government fears the wrong thing. Not another attack. Not the radicalisation that festers in the shadows of Western tolerance. No. They fear the narrative. They fear the uncomfortable political questions that a proper investigation might raise. Questions about integration. About imported ideologies. About the lessons Europe learned too late and Australia is now too timid to confront.

In short, they fear telling the truth.

For decades now, Australians have been hectored about the virtues of inclusion and multicultural harmony. But when that very harmony is shattered by an act of imported hatred, and the state recoils from even naming the cause, one must ask. Whom exactly are we including? And what precisely is the price of such inclusivity?

It is now clearer than ever that we live in a society more terrified of being called “racist” than of being wrong. More appalled by the possibility of offending a community than by the slaughter of its own citizens.

And so, in place of clarity, we get euphemism. In place of justice, we get gestures. In place of a Royal Commission, we get the word “unity” uttered like a prayer by men who lack the courage to defend the values they claim to represent.

But let us be clear. Unity that depends on the suppression of truth is not unity. It is submission.

A Royal Commission would not divide Australia. It would remind the world that this country still takes the blood of its citizens seriously. That it is still capable of moral clarity in the face of evil. That it does not ask its minorities, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or otherwise, to quietly absorb acts of terror in order to preserve someone else’s political comfort.

The refusal to authorise an inquiry will not be remembered as wise restraint. It will be remembered, if we are lucky enough to have historians left willing to write it, as an act of political cowardice. A moment in which our leaders looked directly at the consequences of failed integration and blinked.

And make no mistake. Extremists are watching. They will draw their conclusions not from what is said, but from what is refused. A country that hesitates to confront the ideological motives of its own attackers sends a very clear signal. That the murder of Jews in Australia is politically manageable, so long as the aftermath is politely handled.

That, perhaps, is the most chilling realisation of all.

The atrocity at Bondi was not a tragedy. That word is what we use when we want to avoid blaming anyone. It was an atrocity. A deliberate, ideologically motivated act of murder.

And atrocities demand more than candles.

They demand answers. Investigations. Commissions. Truth.

Not to score points. Not to inflame tensions. But because if truth still matters, if civilisation is to mean anything at all, then it cannot be selectively applied based on who the victims are or what the political cost might be.

Truth isn’t divisive. Cowardice is.

And Australia, in this moment, is in danger of choosing the latter.