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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Jordan King

Gary Lineker sparks fresh row after reposting call to ban Israel from international football

Gary Lineker is at the centre of a fresh row after he reposted a call "to suspend Israel from international sporting bodies" online.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, also known as the BDS movement, appealed to the International Olympic Committee, FIFA and all regional sports governing bodies.

It accused Israel of "grave violations of human rights" and "committing the world’s most live-streamed genocide, armed, funded and protected by the colonial West".

Match of the Day presenter Lineker shared this statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday but has seemingly deleted it since.

He has still faced fierce backlash, with The Campaign Against Antisemitism telling The Telegraph: "Gary Lineker has a lot to say about a lot of things, but antisemitism 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."

Similarly, Jewish Tory MP Andrew Percy said: "Gary Lineker is an ill-informed, ignorant commentator on the Middle East.

"The BDS movement 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."

Stephen Crabb, the parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel and also a former Cabinet minister, called the Lineker's post a "deeply inappropriate tweet for any BBC figure to endorse".

"The BDS movement is riddled with antisemitism from top to bottom, and deepens the divisions in our own society," he added.

Lineker, 63, is no stranger to controversy. Last year, he compared Suella Braverman’s language about the Government's Rwanda policy to that of Nazi Germany.

The BBC briefly asked him to step back from Match of the Day but Lineker quickly returned after colleagues boycotted several sports shows in protest.

The broadcaster has since tightened its social media guidelines for staff on issues of impartiality - but those who do not work in news and current affairs tend to have more freedom.

A spokesperson for the BBC said: "We aren't going to give a commentary on individuals or individual tweets."

A hundred days have passed since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants on Israel, triggering the fierce assault on Gaza by Israeli forces.

On Sunday, the militant group aired a video showing three Israeli hostages being held in Gaza and urged the Israeli government to stop its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group and bring about their release.

The undated 37-second video of Noa Argamani, 26, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, ended with the caption: "Tomorrow (Monday) we will inform you of their fate."

Of some 240 people seized by Hamas in the cross-border killing spree, around half were released in a November truce. Israel says 132 remain in Gaza and 25 of them have died in captivity.

Israel also says more than 1,200 people were killed in the October 7 assault.

Gaza's health ministry has said almost 24,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive.

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