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Gary Lineker, a sports reporter and the highest-paid on-air announcer at the BBC, is one of the organization’s staff — there are so many at the broadcaster who share his views — who has long displayed his anti-Israel animus, and now his sharing of an antisemitic post has led to his forced resignation at the BBC. More on the reasons for his departure can be found here: “Gary Lineker to leave BBC after sharing antisemitic content to social media – report,” Jerusalem Post, May
BBC’s Gary Lineker is reported to be leaving the BBC and to announce his resignation on Monday after receiving backlash for sharing antisemitic content, The Guardian reported.
Last week, Lineker received backlash after he reposted a pro-Palestinian video on social media that criticized Zionism and included a rat emoji, and later apologized for the post.
Rats have historically antisemitic connotations that were popularized in Germany under the Nazi regime.
The English sports broadcaster claimed in a public statement that he would “never knowingly share anything antisemitic” and that he had deleted the post “as soon as I became aware of the issue.”
This resignation comes after numerous campaigns and complaints to the BBC from the Jewish community.
Not only Jews, but many other people offended by this kind of antisemitism no doubt complained.
Here is one representative comment about Lineker on X:
…The post comes shortly after Lineker, who is also the former England soccer captain, defended his right to express his opinions on issues such as Gaza in an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan.
During the interview, Lineker said: “I know where I stand on this. I’m sorry. It’s more important than the BBC. What’s going on there is the mass murder of thousands of children [and] is probably something that we should have a little opinion on.”
There is no “mass murder” of children in Gaza. The IDF makes tremendous efforts to minimize civilian casualties, as Hamas makes similar efforts to increase their number, by hiding its men and weapons in civilian buildings, including but not limited to schools, mosques, hospitals, and apartment buildings. The IDF has dropped millions of leaflets, sent millions of text messages, and made millions of robocalls, all in order to war civilians away from sites and buildings about to be targeted. The result is that of the 53,000 dead in Gaza to date, 22,000 were Hamas members. In Gaza, prior to the war, 800 people died each month from diseases and accidents. There is no reason to assume that number has changed, which means that in the 20 months of war, 16,000 people died of non-combat-related causes. So the total number of civilians in Gaza who died as a result of the war can be calculated as follows: 53,000-22,000 is 31,000, from which we must further deduct 16,000 deaths unrelated to combat, leaving a total of 15,000. 40% of the population of Gaza consist of people under the age of 15. Of the 15,000 civilian deaths in Gaza attributable to the war, then, 6,000 are children. Out of a population of just under a million children, this is far less than 1%. Is that “mass murder”? Does Gary Lineker not understand what the IDF has done to minimize those civilian deaths, with its leaflets, text messaging, and robocalls? Is he aware that British Colonel Richard Kemp, who served in a half-dozen wars and commanded British troops in Afghanistan, has called the IDF “the most moral army in the world” because of its effort to warn civilians? Does he know that Professor John Spencer of West Point concluded from his study of the Gaza war that Israel has “implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires”?
It tells us a lot about the BBC personnel that people were walking out from BBC Sport to protest his temporary suspension for making the preposterous and outrageous charge that the British government — then in the hands of the Conservative Party — was acting like the Nazis in the 1930s. These people, too, are part of the problem, and evidence of why the BBC needs to clean house, not just by letting go of Gary Lineker, but by firing all those who support him for his anti-Israel and, let’s face it, antisemitic views.
