Just how thick is Gary Lineker? I know that in football circles he’s seen as something of an intellectual.
Then again, they used to call the former West Ham and England midfielder Trevor Brooking ‘The Professor’ because he had two A-levels. So it gives you some idea of how low the crossbar’s set.
We’re not talking Albert Camus here. The Nobel Prize-winning philosopher and one-time goalkeeper said: ‘All that I know most surely about morality and duty, I owe to football.’
But Lineker clearly fancies himself as some kind of cerebral authority on matters way beyond the game which gave him fortune and fame and launched him on a lucrative media career.
Not for the first time he finds himself in deep schtuk over yet another crass social media intervention designed to burnish his woke credentials. Back in March, he was suspended by the BBC after comparing then Home Secretary Sue Ellen Braverman’s language on illegal immigration to Nazi Germany.
Shamefully, the corporation’s spineless director-general Tim Davie capitulated when Lineker’s fellow Match Of The Day pundits and other sports presenters effectively went on strike.
Lineker clearly fancies himself as some kind of cerebral authority on matters way beyond the game which gave him fortune and fame and launched him on a lucrative media career
Davie subsequently announced new ‘guidelines’ giving Lineker and other freelance broadcasters carte blanche to post what they liked online, provided they didn’t stray into party politics.
Far from restraining Lineker, it only seems to have emboldened him. This week, he’s been at it again, endorsing a video on Twitter, or whatever letter it calls itself this week, accusing Israel of ‘genocide’.
He told his almost nine million followers that an interview by the Guardian’s resident Toytown Trot Owen Jones with Holocaust historian Raz Segal was ‘worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’.
The mere fact it was being hosted by pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel fanatic Jones tells you in advance where this was heading.
Segal declared that Hamas’s pogrom on October 7 could not be compared to the Holocaust. Under the Nazis, ‘powerless Jews’ were being murdered by ‘one of the most powerful states and armies’.
Today, what we are seeing is a ‘very powerful state’ being attacked by Palestinians who have for decades suffered under Israel’s ‘settler-colonial rule’.
So that’s all right, then.
Lineker told his followers that an interview by the Guardian’s Owen Jones (pictured) with Holocaust historian Raz Segal was ‘worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’
The fact that 1,400 innocent men, women, children and babies were slaughtered by a racist, terrorist army that wants to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the Earth, is apparently beside the point.
Although this was the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Segal insists that the context is ‘very, very different’. He then goes on to describe Israel’s retaliation against Hamas in Gaza as ‘genocide’, turning the truth on its head. The only party hell-bent on genocide is Hamas.
READ MORE: BBC staff ‘fury’ at Gary Lineker after Match of the Day star shared video which accused Israel of committing ‘textbook genocide’ in Gaza – in fresh impartiality row for broadcaster
Gary Lineker (pictured) has sparked a fresh impartiality row by sharing a video which accuses Israel of committing ‘textbook genocide’ in Gaza
Yet this inflammatory garbage is something Lineker considers worthy of ’13 minutes of anybody’s time’.
No doubt many of his gullible 8.9 million followers lapped it up, even if half of them think Genocide is that group Phil Collins used to be in.
If only a few thousand believe this video, it helps explain why so many half-wits are prepared to join anti-Israel marches on the streets of London and elsewhere.
As I said, we’re not talking Camus here. If Lineker had a shred of self-awareness, he may have paused to consider his moral obligations before diving in with both feet. He may believe he hasn’t technically committed a breach of the BBC’s new social media guidelines, unless you consider Hamas a legitimate political party.
But surely after the debacle, he had duty to stay schtumm, just as he did when Hamas attacked Israel. As I wrote back in March, whatever the ‘guidelines’, he knows the rules.
The BBC devoted serious time, money and energy into creating the polished presenter we see on our screens today. It was the foundation of his fabulous media fortune. I was there at the time, hosting the flagship football phone-in 6-0-6.
Lineker is one of the half-dozen ‘faces’ of the BBC, as well as its highest-paid presenter on £1.35 million a year. He’s worked for the corporation for the best part of three decades and knows the rules inside out. And the cardinal rule is: you don’t embarrass the BBC.
It’s reported that he’s being offered another contract extension. So why rock the boat again just now? Maybe he thinks he’s untouchable.
Perhaps he calculates that if the Beeb boots him into touch, he’ll be picked up on an even bigger salary by a rival network – possibly one bankrolled by Arabs.
How will Davie respond this time? The issue is just as straightforward as it was last March. Should someone — however talented or high-profile — employed by a public broadcaster, and paid a small fortune out of licence fees collected on pain of prosecution, be allowed to use that platform to promote his own political prejudices?
The answer has to be: No.
The video, by journalist Owen Jones (left), features academic Raz Segal (right) who accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ and disregards comparisons between Hamas and the Nazis
Lineker reposted the video alongside the caption: ‘Worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’
Lineker’s stance on Israel may simply reflect the apparent widespread sentiment within the BBC, which refuses to call Hamas murderers ‘terrorists’ and allows reporters to parrot Hamas propaganda unchallenged and unchecked.
Yet even within the corporation there is a feeling that this time he’s gone too far. BBC staff are reported to think his latest social media stunt has made life ‘bloody difficult’ for Jewish colleagues.
Like the rest of Britain’s loyal Jewish community, they are under siege right now. Anti-Semitic incidents are off the charts. And now they are forced to endure the BBC’s best-paid presenter pouring petrol on the flames.
They’re not alone, either.
Lineker is obviously quite happy to bite the hand that feeds — and fed — him.
Camus said he owed all he knew about morality to football. Lineker owes his career to football yet, on the basis of this latest tweet, appears to have learned nothing about morality.
Between 1989 and 1992, Gary Lineker played for the club I support, Tottenham Hotspur, scoring 80 goals in 132 games. None of these come anywhere near the spectacular own goal he’s just scored.
Spurs famously have the largest number of Jewish supporters in the country, although Arsenal run them close. During his time at White Hart Lane, they adored Lineker.
Whatever their, often hostile, views towards the Israeli government, they all have one thing in common: a fervent belief in the Jewish homeland.
They take their holidays there and many have relatives living in Israel.
More pertinently, so many of them lost family in the Holocaust. Others are children and grandchildren of survivors. For older Jews, the hurt is still raw.
Now they see their former idol endorsing a video accusing Israel of ‘textbook genocide’.
It is difficult to think of a greater betrayal. Even if the BBC overlook his latest social media stupidity, in London N17 he’ll never be forgiven.
Did any of this occur to Lineker as he rushed to ingratiate himself with the pro-Palestinian, pseudo-intellectuals of Islington and Hampstead rather than the Jewish football supporters of Tottenham, who once worshipped him?
Shouldn’t have thought so, not even for 13 minutes.
Just how thick is Gary Lineker?