BBC host Gary Lineker came under fire from MPs and Jewish leaders after retweeting a call for Israel to be banned from international soccer games, The Telegraph reported.
The Match of the Day presenter reposted a statement on X from a pro-Palestinian Arab campaign calling for Israel to be ousted from all global tournaments and games “until it ends its grave violations of international law”, according to the report.
The post was no longer on Lineker’s page as of Monday morning.
The post was from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel. It included a statement from the Palestinian Football Association which called upon FIFA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to join all regional and global sporting bodies in sanctioning Israel.
The statement demanded that they “take an urgent stance towards Israel’s grave violations of human rights and subject it to legal accountability measures”, according to The Telegraph.
The post went on to demand that the public and officials pressure FIFA and the IOC “to suspend Israel’s membership and ban it from international tournaments and games until it ends its grave violations of international law, particularly its apartheid rule and the crime of genocide it is perpetuating in Gaza”.
Andrew Percy, a prominent Jewish Tory MP, told The Telegraph in response, “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,” added Percy.
“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,” he said.
Stephen Crabb, a former cabinet minister and the parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel, said, “This is a deeply inappropriate tweet for any BBC figure to endorse, and especially for someone of Lineker’s prominence.”
“The BDS movement is riddled with anti-Semitism from top to bottom, and deepens the divisions in our own society. 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,” added Crabb.
Jonathan Gullis, the Tory MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, said, “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.”
“We wait for international diplomat and foreign policy expert, Gary Lineker, to call this out soon,” he added.
The BBC declined to comment. A source quoted by The Telegraph said, “We aren’t going to give a commentary on individuals or individual tweets.”
Lineker, a former England soccer player, was taken off air by bosses at the BBC last March after comparing the launch of the Conservatives' new policy to the rhetoric of Nazi-era Germany. He was back on the air a week later.
The latest incident involving Lineker comes as the BBC has been criticized over its coverage of the war in Gaza.
In November, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket.
The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate” on the explosion.
Just last week, the BBC apologized for reporting a Hamas claim that Israeli forces were carrying out “summary executions” of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
The network’s new Chair, Samir Shah, has said he intends to review the corporation’s reporting guidelines on the Israel–Hamas war.