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BBC broadcaster and former professional football player Gary Lineker landed in hot water after he retweeted a post from a pro-Palestinian group urging authorities to ban Israel from international sporting events. The group called for the ban as a way to hold the country accountable for their "grave violations of human rights" in Gaza.
The post was uploaded by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (BDS) on January 13, 2024.
Gary Lineker's retweet of the post caused a lot of controversy, with Jewish people calling him out for not speaking out against anti-semitism. People on X have voiced their outrage, with one person tweeting:
"The BBC MUST boot him out."
Netizens outraged by Gary Lineker's call for banning Israel from sports
The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine has the people divided on the internet, with supporters on both sides. Gary Lineker's retweet gained a lot of traction from Jewish people who saw this as a by-product of the rampant anti-semitism in Britain after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel.
According to The Independent, The Campaign Against Antisemitism accused Gary Lineker of not condemning anti-semitism.
“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,” a campaign spokesperson was reported as saying.
Andrew Percy, a Conservative Jewish MP, accused 63-year-old Gary Lineker of being 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, the parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel, said that it was "deeply inappropriate" for Gary Lineker to support a movement that is "riddled with anti-semitism from top to bottom."
According to The Guardian, the UK hit a record number of hate incidents against British Jews since the start of the Israel-Palestine conflict on October 7, 2023. As of November 2023, more than 1000 such hate crimes have been recorded, including targeting of schools.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack in Israel, killing over 1200 people. The consequent attack was brutal as Israel laid siege in the Gaza Strip, allegedly displacing millions from their homes and depriving them of food, water and other necessities.
As of December 6, 2023, nearly 18,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry figures. It has been 100 days since the conflict began and calls for a ceasefire have not been beneficial as the attacks continue in Gaza.
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