Top BBC presenter Gary Lineker urges boycott of Israeli sports, later deletes post
Former soccer star retweets, then removes, call by boycott group for FIFA and International Olympic Committee to bar Israeli athletes
The BBC’s highest-paid presenter, Gary Lineker, reposted a tweet Saturday urging FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to join a global boycott of Israel, sparking outrage from Conservative lawmakers and an antisemitism watchdog in the United Kingdom.
The post was no longer on Lineker’s feed on Monday morning, having apparently been deleted.
The post by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel called on “all regional and int’l sports bodies to take an urgent stance on Israel’s grave violations of human rights and subject it to legal accountability measures.”
The former soccer star was blasted by a number of Conservative MPs, who said the BBC should take action against Lineker for supporting the boycott campaign.
“Hamas harms the people they claim to represent, stealing aid off the people of Gaza, using innocent Gazans as human shields, and throwing LGBT+ people off buildings. All this whilst their leaders live a life of luxury in Qatar,” said MP Jonathan Gullis.
“We wait for international diplomat and foreign policy expert, Gary Lineker, to call this out soon,” he added.
The Palestinian Football Association calls on @iocmedia, @FIFAcom and all regional and int'l sports bodies to take an urgent stance on Israel’s grave violations of human rights and subject it to legal accountability measures. https://t.co/WLgKm4SIKY pic.twitter.com/jpg4JA2rNT
— PACBI – BDS movement (@PACBI) January 13, 2024
Stephen Crabb, the chair of Westminster’s Conservative Friends of Israel, labeled the post “deeply inappropriate” for a “BBC figure to endorse and especially for someone of Lineker’s prominence.”
“The BDS movement is riddled with antisemitism from top to bottom and deepens the divisions in our own society,” he said in a statement. “Given all the problematic questions that have been raised previously about BBC bias during the Gaza conflict, they must not allow high-profile presenters to freelance on these incredibly sensitive issues.”
Conservative MP Andrew Percy told The Telegraph: “The BDS [Boycott Divestment and Sanctions] movement [to boycott Israel] is a racist, antisemitic campaign and nobody who receives taxpayers’ money working in the BBC should be endorsing a campaign that is widely understood to promote Jew hate.”
Supporters of the boycott Israel movement say that in urging businesses, artists, and universities to sever ties with Israel, they are using nonviolent means to oppose unjust policies toward Palestinians. Israel says the movement masks its motives to delegitimize and destroy the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the Campaign Against Antisemitism said Lineker’s call for a boycott came at a time of rocketing antisemitism.
“Gary Lineker has a lot to say about a lot of things, but antisemitism does not appear to be one of them,” a spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism told The Times. “At a time of record levels of racism against Jews, not a peep. But he has found the time to amplify a call to suspend the world’s only Jewish state from international sports. His priorities are clear.”
Lineker, who hosts the flagship soccer highlight show “Match of the Day,” has been the focus of an ongoing dispute over the impartiality of the BBC, sparked by his criticism of the UK government’s asylum policy. The former England soccer player was briefly taken off air by bosses at the publicly funded broadcaster last year after comparing the launch of the Conservatives’ new policy to the rhetoric of Nazi-era Germany.
The BBC, the UK’s public broadcaster, has had to issue several apologies over its reporting of the Israel-Hamas war since the start of the conflict on October 7, at times rushing to publish unverifiable claims by Hamas and Palestinian media.
The TV network has also faced widespread criticism, including from the British government, for refusing to call Hamas a terrorist group or its members terrorists — a policy it has in common with many major international news organizations.
The UK has experienced a surge in antisemitic and anti-Israel activity since October 7, when Hamas-led terrorists rampaged through southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping at least 240 people to Gaza.
Israel then launched a military campaign — aimed at toppling the Hamas regime which has ruled Gaza since 2007 — and securing the release of the hostages. The offensive has come under harsh international criticism for its mounting death toll.
