One difference between us and the apes – from which we humans came – is cutlery.  Cutlery is part of what we call courtesy, which is what helps humans get along with each other.  Apes do not know courtesy.  That is a significant plus for us in the evolution of humanity.

Another plus is that we think about how we relate to each other and seek to develop rules that we call morals and which we can elevate into rules of law.  Apes do not deal in morals or laws.

But there are at least two big minuses. 

One is that we think more than animals do, and we can find ways to hurt or destroy other humans.  We are capable of consciously doing evil.  Apes do not seek to hurt or kill anything.

The other minus is that we humans tend to believe in the supernatural.  We call that religion.  By definition, religion is beyond logic.  It is premised on faith.  It is therefore out of bounds for many of us, and there are very many types or brands of faith.

The Bible is scripture recognized in some parts by the three major faiths in Australia.  It says there is only one God, and that He favours one group of people over others.  He promises them land and authorizes them to kill men, women and children who stand in their way.

That teaching, and the teachings of other faiths, have been the cause of much hate and misery in the world.  Just as one example, I set out the account of Edward Gibbon of what occurred when the Crusaders entered Jerusalem.

A bloody sacrifice was offered by his [Tancred’s] mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease.  After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare.  The Holy Sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow.  Bare-headed and bare foot, with contrite hearts and in a humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.  This union of the fiercest and most tender passions has been variously considered by two philosophers: by the one, as easy and natural; by the other, as absurd and critical.

(The first philosopher referred to is David Hume; the second was Voltaire.)

After the horrors of two world wars, a poll was taken in Germany of the war that terrified them most.  It was the ultimate war of religion, the Thirty Years War.

In my lifetime, there have been many wars, but the most lethal has been the conflict in the Holy Land following the creation of the state of Israel, and the division of Palestine.  Both sides claim vindication by faith as justifying violence and killing.

This has led to frightful repercussions for the diasporas of Muslims and Jews around the world.

It is far too early to draw conclusions, but the events of yesterday in Bondi appear to be one of those repercussions.

It is a fact of life that when a community is challenged its people look for scapegoats.  Elsewhere, I wrote:

In Ancient Greece there was a practice or rite of casting out someone like a beggar or cripple orcriminal in the face of some natural threat or disaster.  There are traces of a far older tradition in Syria when a goat would be invoked in the purification rites for the king’s wedding – a she-goat was driven out into the waste with a silver bell on her neck.  More recently, but before the Greek custom developed, the Old Testament, Leviticus 16:8, said that ‘And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.’  The goat of the Lord was sacrificed, and the high priest by confession transferred the sins of himself and the people to the goat that was permitted to escape in the wilderness – where its fate would depend on what sort of predators it might have to contend with.  There was a form of atonement.  The goat that escaped became the ‘scapegoat.’  The traditions or rites might be said to prefigure the role of the Son of God being offered up to redeem mankind by atoning for its sins.  A scapegoat is one who is punished for the sins of others.  This ancient Middle Eastern rite has become a universal custom involving people rather than goats.

But the term has got much wider than that – a scapegoat now is not just one that has to answer for the sins of others; it has to answer for all the problems and failings of what might be called the host people.  So, in the most gruesome example, the Nazis held the Jews responsible for all the lesions on the German people, moral or economic. 

Typically, people look to outsiders to be their scapegoats.  In Europe and the United States in this century people have turned on migrants in the face of adversity. 

Will that happen here in Australia in light of the events at Bondi and elsewhere?

There are serious problems in making migrants into scapegoats in Australia – for which, if I believed in God, I would thank Him.

If by ‘migrant’ you refer to someone who was born outside this country, or is the child of such a person, then more than half of us are migrants.  You cannot scapegoat a majority. 

And I thank every such ‘migrant’ for helping us to escape our somnolent ride into mediocrity under a foreign monarch and a distinctly unreliable president.

Then, there are those who were here before us in the land we call Australia – the First Nations.  They were here for say sixty thousand years before us.  In their eyes, all white people are ‘migrants’ and very recent ones at that.  (I put to one side that a substantial number of Americans prefer Genesis to those timelines, because if you can jettison truth and reality for one purpose, you can do so for others.) 

We Australians say that the Americans lied when they said that all men are created equal.  But did not we white people lie when we said that we ‘settled’ here?  Do not the actions of the ‘settlers’ in Palestine now show just how slippery that term is?

That leaves the fundamental issue.  At the core of what I regard as ‘civilization’ is the notion that each of us has our own worth or dignity just because we are human.  It is a violation of that premise to suggest that a person may be denied that worth just because of the history of the group that that person belongs to.  Branding is what we do to cattle.  The aspersion of inferiority is in my view the root of most evil in our humanity.

It was therefore a relief to see humanity at Bondi.  A man tackled one killer and seized his weapon.  A boy then threw a rock at the killer.  The press says that the hero is a fruit shop owner named Ahmed.  They have not named the boy. 

We might forego the predictable reactions of some politicians, local and foreign, and leave blaming migrants to people like Farage and Trump.  But we should not spare what passes for the Opposition, which is both inept and tasteless.

Two questions interest me more.  We think our gun laws are sound enough to make us safe.  How did the killers get access to these weapons and that ammunition?  I suspect that the white settlers of the gun lobby have weakened our defences in our laws.  (And I say that as a former gun owner.)

Will the survivor live to talk?  The press says the killers were father and son.  The mother says of the survivor: ‘Anyone would wish to have a son like my son…he’s a good boy’.  The photo shows him a keen and proud student of the Koran.

I suspect that God will be invoked.  It would be ironic for God to be the ultimate scapegoat in a nation founded by English convicts.