Lineker in ‘ban Israel from football’ row

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 yesterday reposted a statement on X, formerly Twitter, 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 intervene to sanction its highest paid presenter.

The tweet Lineker reposted was from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. It included a statement from the Palestinian Football Association that called upon Fifa and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to sanction Israel.

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 Jewish Conservative MP, said: “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.”

Stephen Crabb, a former Cabinet minister and the parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “This is a deeply inappropriate tweet for someone of Lineker’s prominence.

It is understood that the BBC only considers comments to be a breach of impartiality if they make reference to a political party. The BBC declined to comment. A source said: “We aren’t going to give a commentary on individuals or individual tweets.”