Former England football international and broadcaster, Gary Lineker, has been condemned by MPs and Jewish leaders after retweeting a call for Israel to be banned from international football.
The Match of the Day presenter reposted a statement on X from a pro-Palestinian campaign calling for Israel to be ousted from all global tournaments and games ‘until it ends its grave violations of international law’.
Tory MPs have now demanded that the BBC sanctions Lineker, as they said they were waiting for ‘international diplomat and foreign policy expert, Gary Lineker’ to condemn Hamas’s atrocities.
It also follows the outcry in 2023 over Lineker comparing the British government’s Rwanda policy to Nazi Germany.
Andrew Percy, a prominent Jewish Tory MP, told The Telegraph: ‘Gary Lineker is an ill-informed, ignorant commentator on the Middle East.
‘The BDS movement [to boycott Israel] is a racist, anti-Semitic campaign and nobody who receives taxpayers’ money working in the BBC should be endorsing a campaign that is widely understood to promote Jew hate.
‘There has to be a line where the BBC has to intervene, and him endorsing a racist campaign, which is what the BDS group is widely understood to be, surely must be a new low if they’re going to allow him to get away with that.’
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said: ‘Gary Lineker has a lot to say about a lot of things, but anti-Semitism does not appear to be one of them.
‘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.’
The BBC declined to comment: ‘We aren’t going to give a commentary on individuals or individual tweets’.