Gary Lineker, Accusations of Anti-Semitism and the Ignorant Apathy of the Football World

Misconceptions about Anti-Semitism

This week we all heard the news of Gary Lineker being fired from his BBC position as Match of the Day host. I don’t know about you, but I have extreme admiration for Lineker - the rare footballer with a backbone and some integrity in a sea of spineless sell-outs.

Lineker shared a tweet about Zionism from the esteemed Palestinian Lawyer Diana Butto, which had an emoji of a rat on it. The resulting morally abhorrent and vicious action against an icon of British sports and the rare humanitarian with enough balls and compassion to actually speak up, while the institutions of power are clamping down on anybody opposing a genocide, was of course orchestrated by one of thousands of aggressive “charities” that kindly safeguard the tenets of free speech (as long as it agrees with what they say – after all, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others as the pig in Animal Farm famously said).

The charity in question CAA (Campaign Against Anti-semitism) pushed for Lineker’s sacking, with the same gusto with which one of their associate bodies, Lawyers for Israel, lobbied for the removal of plates hand painted by Gazan refugee children, from a hospital wall in London, for causing Jewish patients to feel threatened.

A spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews (more appropriately called, the Board of Deputies of British Jews Supporting Genocide) stated that: “The BBC has allowed the situation with Gary Lineker to continue for far too long. He has caused great offence with this video – particularly with [its] egregious use of a rat emoji to illustrate Zionists. BBC should ask him to leave now rather than allowing him to dictate his own terms.”

This disingenuous framing in order to get Lineker sacked, due to his frequent and inconvenient speaking out against “Israel’s” genocidal campaign in Gaza, should never have been entertained, less acted upon - yet it illustrates the inordinate power of the Zionist lobby and its stranglehold over British media, particularly the BBC, institution of hypocrisy par excellence.

The Rat Emoji and Tropes of Dehumanization

It will not have escaped anybody with a modicum of critical thinking and who is interested in the ongoing Palestine-“Israel” situation, that the rat as an insult, symbolizes the dehumanization of any group that is marginalized and denigrated by a society, the “other” and oppressed who is reduced to being characterized as vermin.

The rat is also used to refer to conduct that is morally reprehensible, disgusting or lowly – such as “love rat”. We use terms like “rat” to describe disgraceful conduct.

Within the past 19 months, amongst Zionist and “Israeli” social media, the rat and other connotations and symbols of vermin such as cockroaches – have been used to describe Palestinians, Arabs and the group most maligned today, Muslims.

Organizations like the CAA and countless others, exist to manipulate public perception, clamp down upon criticism of “Israel” and fuel the ongoing hatred, racism and attitudes of divisiveness towards anybody who dares speak out about the conduct of “Israel” and its representatives.

By claiming that the rat is somehow indicative of antisemitism, they continue in the vein of co-opting all derogatory symbols as somehow indicative of anti Jewish attitudes, and therefore cynically leverage their eternal victim status to shut people up about “Israel” and shut down the rebuke that Zionists deserve for their support of “Israel’s” genocidal actions in Gaza.

I will go further – the recent use of the rat emoji to characterize Palestinians, is indeed antisemitic but not in the way you might think - since the people of Palestine are the true Semites, the term anti-Semitic in its usual usage, includes within itself a false claim.

The Campaign that Should be Happening

If anybody thinks that a figure like Gary Lineker is filled with hate, racist intent or antisemitism, they are so sorely misguided, it is laughable - and people know this. As one of the very few white, English footballers, not to mention one of the most famous, to speak out against “Israel” and for Palestine, out of pure humanity and compassion, Lineker deserves not only the highest accolade – but he also deserves his colleagues at the BBC and within the football industry, to speak out on his behalf. In a world where many are slaves to shallow materialism, Lineker has put his career and professional reputation on the line to speak up for what is right.

It is incredibly sad that rather than gathering around him and showing some support, moral backbone and standing up to disingenuous and aggressive bodies like the CAA, that there is instead a loud silence. The campaign that should be happening, is that of Lineker receiving support for his humanitarian stance.

Lineker has taken a radical humanitarian position, in also rightly calling for Israel to be banned from international sporting events – and it is only when organizations group together for what is right, that the status quo can be challenged and the ignominious wall of silence somehow disrupted.

Instead, the world of football has been notoriously silent on Palestine, and even excessively punitive towards those who have spoken out – despite the fact that “Israel” has a policy of shooting young men in the knees to prevent them from competing in sports like football, which dates back to Yitzhak Rabin’s (“Israel” PM 1974-77) famous “broken bones” policy for Palestinian children.

Israeli snipers shot Palestinian football player Muhammad Khalil Obeid in both of his knees during a peaceful protest by Palestinians on 30 March 2018, ending a promising football career. It is a fact that “Israel” has successfully managed to kill off the best and brightest of Palestinian talent, a broader agenda that has been in operation way before October 7^th.

Perhaps let that sink in, as a single example of the kind of deliberate act of calculated cruelty exacted by “Israel” multiple times, every single day, far predating any October 7th; a professional football player at the start of a potentially huge career in football, being deliberately shot in the knees to disable him.

There are malicious policies “enshrined” within “Israeli” military law, that aim to constantly cut down any chance of Palestinians competing on the world stage and proving that Palestinians have a world of talent. This is just one of them.

If those within the world of football had any integrity, they would not only support their colleague and one of the best football players England has ever had, but they would start to speak out against the inclusion of “Israel” in football, given that it has been declared illegal by the ICJ and UN, and decried for years prior to this as an apartheid state by all major human rights institutions, as well as the fact that it has done its utmost to prevent Palestinians competing on an international level.