A controversial Labour councillor is facing renewed calls to be sacked from her cabinet role after she attended a pro-Palestine rally that celebrated terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi — once dubbed “Israel’s most wanted”.
Cllr Jenny Lynn spoke at a rally last week where protesters carried pictures of Zubeidi, the mastermind of the 2002 Beit She’an attack that killed six civilians.
Cllr Lynn, Cabinet member for Public Services and Communities at Calderdale in West Yorkshire, was already facing calls to be removed from the post for organising a rally in August in which a placard with swastikas was carried and protesters chanted the Hamas rallying cry “from the river to the sea”.
At Calderdale’s full council meeting this week, Labour leader Tim Swift was due to face renewed questions on why Cllr Lynn is still in her post. Liberal Democrat leader James Baker told the JC: “I don’t see how you can be the Cabinet member for community safety and then attend a rally which supports a murderer and terrorist and seeks to portray him as a political prisoner. It is shocking and appalling.”
Calderdale Conservative group leader Steven Leigh added: “You cannot represent all communities and then attend a rally like this.”
At last week’s even — which was organised by the Manchester Palestine Action Group and held in front of the Oldham site of Israel defence firm Elbit Systems — Cllr Lynn, chairwoman of Halifax Friends of Palestine, spoke about Palestinian prisoners. “The risk of being imprisoned or being arrested in the middle of the night is absolutely horrific,” she said.
She appeared in front of a poster of Zubeidi. A senior operative in the Al-Asqa Martyrs Brigade, Zubeidi was first jailed for planning the 2002 terrorist attack in the city of Beit She’an where gunmen opened fire and threw grenades at the Likud party polling station as people queued up to cast their votes in a Likud primary. Six Israeli civilians were killed and 34 injured. Zubeidi was one of six prisoners who staged a dramatic break out from Gilboa Prison in north Israel last month. He was recaptured after five days on the run.
Mr Swift told the JC: “I will discuss these allegations with Cllr Lynn”.
Speaking in the wake of the August rally, Cllr Lynn said: “There is nothing incompatible about my role as chair of a community-based organisation — Halifax Friends of Palestine — and my role in supporting all our communities. There is nothing antisemitic about standing up for the rights of Palestinian people.”
