I have been walking around lately with what political philosophers politely call moral fatigue and what the rest of us call being very tired of the world.
The news cycle has turned cruelty into background noise. Violence arrives prepackaged with explanations, excuses, and comment sections that feel like social experiments we should have shut down years ago. You start reading headlines the way you read terms and conditions. Quickly, skeptically, and assuming the worst.
Which is why Bondi Beach caught me off guard. Not because of the terror. Sadly, that part has become grimly familiar. But because of the interruption.
A crack in the cynicism
Sunday evening, Bondi Beach. A Hanukkah celebration by the sea. Families, children, lights, music. Then gunfire. Two attackers. Chaos. Fifteen people killed, including a ten year old child. Police later called it what it was, a terrorist attack driven by antisemitism.
That is the structural outline of the story. The facts matter. They always do.
But then there is the human footnote that refuses to stay small.
Ahmed al Ahmed, a fruit shop owner and father of two, saw one of the attackers subdued by bystanders. Instead of stepping back into safety, he stepped forward. He took the gun. He stopped the threat. He was shot in the arm and hand and is now recovering after surgery.
Because of him, people went home.
Hannah Arendt once warned that the greatest danger to humanity is not monstrous evil, but the quiet normalisation of it. Evil becoming administrative. Routine. Expected. What happened at Bondi should have followed that script. Terror appears. We mourn. We argue. We move on, a little colder than before.
Ahmed ruined that trajectory.
Why philosophers hate heroes and why they still need them
Modern political theory is suspicious of hero narratives, and rightly so. They can distract from systems, policies, and power structures. They can become excuses for institutional failure. But there is a difference between mythologising heroism and recognizing moral agency.
Albert Camus argued that in an absurd world, meaning is not discovered but created through action. Ahmed did not deliver a manifesto. He did not perform virtue. He acted.
And in doing so, he quietly dismantled several lazy assumptions at once. That fear always wins. That people retreat when violence arrives. That identity determines allegiance. A Muslim man defending a Jewish gathering with his own body does not fit neatly into the binaries that sustain outrage economies.
Reality, once again, refused to cooperate with ideology.
Explaining the tragedy without losing the point
The attack unfolded near Archer Park just before 7pm. Witness footage shows shots fired from a footbridge connecting the car park to the beach. Police responded rapidly. One attacker was killed at the scene. The second remains in critical condition.
Victims ranged from young children to the elderly. Among the dead was Rabbi Eli Schlanger, remembered by family as generous, energetic, and deeply kind. Others included Israeli and French citizens. More than forty people were hospitalized. Two police officers were also injured in the response.
Australia’s Prime Minister has pledged to revisit gun laws, even in a country already known for strict regulation. Global leaders condemned the attack. Memorials formed. Blood donation lines stretched around the block.
All of this matters. Policy matters. Prevention matters. Naming antisemitism matters.
But so does moral clarity.
What actually restored my faith
I live in Victoria Falls, far from Bondi, in a place where the river keeps moving regardless of global despair. Tourists still ask where to stand for the perfect photo. Life, irritatingly, insists on continuing.
But stories travel faster than rivers.
What Ahmed al Ahmed did was not symbolic. It was practical. It reduced harm. It saved lives. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns called him a genuine hero and said many people are alive because of his bravery. That is empirically true.
The quieter truth is that he reminded many of us that moral courage still exists outside speeches, hashtags, and carefully worded statements.
Terror wants us afraid. It wants us divided. It wants us suspicious of one another. It wants us convinced that violence is inevitable and compassion is naïve.
Ahmed did not argue with that worldview. He contradicted it.
And for someone who has been professionally cynical for a while now, that contradiction felt like a small, stubborn reason to keep believing that humanity has not completely lost the plot after all.