A woman was issued a court attendance notice for allegedly leveling abusive antisemitic remarks at a group of people at Bondi Beach this week, the New South Wales Police said on Friday.
She is also charged with offensive language, the police noted.
Identified as public servant Francine Clough, 67, she called a Jewish leader who visited the site of the shooting attack last year an “evil Zionist” while on bail for allegedly staging a bomb hoax outside Adath Yisroel Synagogue, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of Executive Council of Australian Jewry, recounted the incident, saying he was accompanied by a survivor of the massacre, as well as the Sydney Swans Australian rules football team.
“It’s grossly insensitive, it’s more than that, it’s inhuman and it gave them a real life example of what the Jewish community has to deal with on a daily basis,” Australia’s public broadcaster ABC News quoted Ryvchin as saying.
“We see what happens in our society when incitement and hatred and vilification goes unchecked. We’re not going to stand for it, we’re not going to live with this, and we’re not going to allow the desecration of a sacred site with that sort of language and that sort of abuse,” he added.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, reacted to the incident on X on Friday.
“As a reminder, 15 innocent people were gunned down last year at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Many more were wounded. Their crime was lighting a menorah. Their offense was their identity. Their sin was their existence. This is the inevitable outcome of anti-Zionism: violent anti-Jewish hatred that, even as we mourn, we are still demonized and denigrated,” he wrote.
“In a few weeks, I’ll be with Alex at Bondi and will stand in solidarity with him and the entire Australian Jewish community,” he added.
My friend @AlexRyvchin, co-CEO of our J7 partner @ECAJewry, was harassed and slandered as an "evil Zionist" this week while visiting the site of the Bondi massacre. Among those with him was a survivor of the attack.
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) July 24, 2026
As a reminder, 15 innocent people were gunned down last year at…
The survivor of last year’s massacre at the Chanukah candle-lighting event filed a police complaint in the wake of this week’s incident, Ryvchin said.
An employee of the Department of Communities and Justice, Clough left an item outside the synagogue in Bondi in July 2025, police said at the time. She falsely claimed it contained bombs.
Her act caused traffic disruptions and she was charged with creating false belief of danger, after which she was granted conditional bail, ABC News reported.
The DCJ put her on unpaid leave, pending her case.
Clough is due to appear in Waverley Local Court on Sept. 23, 2026, according to NSW Police.
