Woman charged over alleged slur at Bondi massacre site

A woman has been charged with offensive language after allegedly directing antisemitic abuse at a group at Archer Park, the site of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, earlier this week.

NSW Police said officers from the Eastern Suburbs Police Area Command were called to Archer Park about 4.30pm on Wednesday July 22, after a woman allegedly confronted a group of people. Police will allege the woman verbally abused members of the group, making antisemitic comments.

A 67-year-old Bondi woman was on Friday issued with a court attendance notice for offensive behaviour. She is due to appear in Waverley Local Court on September 23.

The Daily Telegraph identified the woman as Francine Clough, reporting that she is a senior officer with the NSW Justice Department who has worked for the Department of Communities and Justice since 2010.

The alleged altercation occurred as Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin was hosting an event at the site for players and leadership from the Sydney Swans, who had come to engage with the Jewish community and hear from a survivor of the December attack.

Ryvchin said that on seeing him, the woman asked “why are there Zionists here?” and, when he approached her, said she wanted to know “what an evil Zionist was doing here”. He said the encounter, which occurred in view of police patrolling the area, was “a fresh reminder of the Jewish experience in Australia in our time and the brazen nature of degenerate antisemitism”.

His colleague, who survived the attack, lifted his shirt to show his bullet scars, but the woman continued, according to an earlier account. The survivor later told the Swans the incident was not unusual. “That’s just something that people experience on a daily basis for no reason,” he said. “The way to combat antisemitism is for good people like yourselves to speak out and speak up.”

Clough disputes the allegation. She told the Daily Telegraph the incident was a “misunderstanding” and a “mix-up”, and denied using the word “evil”. She said she had “stepped in” when she saw Ryvchin speaking to a media crew and asked what he was doing there, and that he had misheard her. She said she strongly denied calling him an “evil Zionist”.

Ryvchin said he was grateful to police for their professionalism and for laying the charge. “The Jewish community will not succumb to hatred and vilification,” he said. “We will not allow the desecration of a sacred site. And we will not allow the poison of antizionism, which places targets on the backs of virtually all Jews, to be passed off as benign political commentary.

“We cannot turn antisemites into good and rational people. But we can exact consequences when they endanger our society and break the law.”