On Gary Lineker’s departure
It is clear that Gary Lineker is not the main story, nor is any other celebrity or academic who is berated and loses their job for expressing support for the Palestinian people and opposes the destruction of Gaza and its people. The story is and must remain what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people, most terribly in Gaza but also in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
However, his treatment highlights the extreme marginalisation of Palestinian people and, even worse, their dehumanisation. Lineker has been under intense pressure and has now resigned, apologising for sharing a post from the Palestine Lobby that included a rat emoji and which has been considered an antisemitic trope. He did not notice the emoji and apologised but somehow this is never enough for those supporting Palestinians and yet is always acceptable for those who support Israel. Indeed, it is worth noting that no-one has lost their job or role on the BBC for supporting Israel and its actions.
If you want to express your frustration at the double standards being applied, you could do worse than vote for Gary Lineker to win the TV Presenter of the Year Award via this link to the National Television Awards (You don’t have to vote in any of the other categories if you don’t want to; you can just skip them.)
It may be of interest to know the Palestine Lobby social media account which produced the video with the rat emoji that got Lineker into trouble has links to several Jewish commentators such as Miko Peled, Gideon Levy, Rabbi Shapiro, Pappe, Amira Haas etc (For more information see palestinelobby:) The instagram post at the centre of the problem has been taken down.
We are not defending the use of a rat emoji but it is important to note that historically its use has been aimed at other groups as well as Jews. For example, the Soviet Union used the image to portray Nazis and, if one looks, it’s easy to find many images from supporters of Israel that depict Palestinians as rats.
Examples can be seen here and here the IDF shown as rat catchers; Here and here Yahya Sinwar as a rodent and a portrayal of Hamas as a rat here in the midst of rubble and eating watermelon here. Perhaps inevitably, there is at least one portraying Hamas not only as rats but also as antisemites, which cannot logically be considerd antisemitic.
Genocide is evil, Gary isn’t . Covering it up is evil so. Shame. Shame shame
For some reason, I watched HIGNFY, last night.
There was a curious little exchange around Gary Lineker. I wasn’t sure if Ian Hislop was playing Devil’s Advocate, to draw out the others, or if he was being serious.
In any case, he did manage to draw comments from Chris McCausland, Janet Street-Porter and Victoria Coren-Mitchell – none of them complimentary. None of them supportive of Lineker. None of them funny.
The Palestinian Genocide didn’t merit a mention.
Paul Merton said now’t! Read into that what you will.
I switched off, after that exchange.
Brilliant analysis (interview) and article. Both a must-read/must listen.
Thanks for the chance to vote in the National TV Awards – great fun. And of course will be even better if Gary McGabface is the winner!
A Guardian article by Barney Roney: ”Lineker failed to fill the void in public discourse on Gaza”: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/may/24/gary-lineker-motd-bbc-antisemitism-row-israel-gaza omitted to finger the architects of the void and its consequences.
I have to confess I (like Lineker) didn’t know that the rat was used by the Nazis to dehumanise Jews, but I have later learned that the rat is not exclusively reserved for denigrating Jewish people. However to Ronay that failure on my part would exclude me from commenting on the 50-60 thousand Gazans killed by Israel since Hamas broke out of Gaza’s open-air prison to kill 1,200 mainly Israelis and took some hundreds of hostages. Neither I, nor Gary Lineker would even feel additional comment is needed if broadcasters and the national press did their job. But, and it’s a big but, the void I think referred to in Ronay’s article is huge and has been near all encompassing of the main stream news sources we should be able to rely on not to leave such a void.
The total destruction of Gaza and everyone in it openly promised along with the well under-way ‘Gazafication’ of the West Bank warrants more than long-awaited criticism from such as our PM. It’s way past time for ‘concrete’ actions, and not of the failing reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) version still threatening the safety of so many of our schoolchildren. Although RACC poses nowhere near the level of threat to our children as the Israeli forces are to the children of Gaza. BDS is the very least any humane government should implement immediately.
“The Canary” (Ed Sykes, 14 May 2025) brought its readers back to the point, and those failing/refusing to see Lineker as anything other than anti-semitic, back to earth:
“Emojis haven’t killed at least one Palestinian child every hour in Gaza since October 2023. Israel has. Emojis haven’t murdered around 17,492 children in that time, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds. Israel has. So if genocide apologists think we should get angry about emojis but not the actual mass murder of children, they can F*** right off.”