Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker left a Jewish journalist shaking with rage after she confronted him over the time he reposted a tweet calling for Israel to be banned from international football.
The BBC host was told his social media posts on X made him appear like an “antisemite” – and he was asked to explain how his foray into the discourse around the Israel-Hamas war avoided breaching the broadcaster’s new social media guidelines, according to a first-hand account published in the Jewish Chronicle.
Reporter Nicole Lampert told the former England goalscorer that she “thought he was behaving like an antisemite. His X feed only showed one side of the issue. He’d never once condemned Hamas on X or sent a message about the hostages.”
She told the broadcaster: “I’m thinking about the women hostages who are probably still being raped.”
Mr Lineker, who has fronted BBC sport’s programme’s for more than 20 years, retorted: “I’m thinking about the babies being killed. I just want peace.”
Earlier, at the Broadcasting Press Guild lunch, Ms Lampert had quizzed Mr Lineker on how his reposting of a tweet calling for the banning of Israel from international football was allowed within the BBC’s new social media guidelines.
Mr Lineker had reposted a tweet from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, demanding the country be prevented from taking to the pitch in internationals.
On X, the organisation wrote: “The Palestinian Football Association calls on @iocmedia, @FIFAcom and all regional and int’l sports bodies to take an urgent stance on Israel’s grave violations of human rights and subject it to legal accountability measures.”
Putting it to Mr Lineker that he had broken the new social media guidelines with his repost, the former Leicester City striker said that the message he shared on X was actually a news story.
Ms Lampert insisted that under the new BBC social media guidelines, Mr Lineker had either fallen foul of his duty to neutrality or he had wrongly thought the X message was a news story, in which case he had broken the rules for not reading the tweet before sending it.
Mr Lineker has since removed his repost, while Ms Lampert later wrote of her experience chatting to him: “I’m still shaking a bit as I write this. It is not often you are offered the chance to come face to face with someone as well known, as loved and reviled as one of the BBC’s biggest stars. Someone whose actions you and many of your community have found personally painful.”
But she admitted that she did have “respect” for the 63-year-old presenter, adding: “Even as we were angrily exchanging words, people tried to drag him away and he insisted on talking to me. I do respect that.”
Ms Lampert wasn’t the only prominent journalist to hold Mr Lineker to account, albeit others did so online.
Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Jake Wallis Simons, blasted the BBC presenter over the reposting, saying: “Gary Lineker has retweeted a call for Israel to be barred from international football. Could this be the same Lineker who pocketed £1.6million from Qatar? And covered the World Cup there? Why, yes. Yes, it is.”
