Gary Lineker: ‘I’m not antisemitic, I’m anti-bad people’

Sports broadcaster Gary Lineker has pushed back at claims that he is antisemitic, claiming instead that he is “anti-Israel government”.

Speaking in an interview with the New Statesman, the Match of the Day presenter denied the accusation that he is anti-Israeli, a claim that arose due to his tweets about the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“I’m anti-Israel government. I’m not in the slightest bit anti-Semitic,” Lineker said.

“I’m not anti-anybody. I am anti-bad people, and there are really bad people involved in this,” he added, referring to the war in the Middle East.

“Eventually, whether it’s five years’, 10 years’, 20 years’ time, I think we’ll look at that and we’ll see it the same way as Iraq times ten. I do, I just genuinely do.”

Lineker has faced accusations that he is anti-Israel after reposting a call on X/Twitter by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel calling for the Jewish state to be barred from tournaments and games.

Lineker has since said that he did not understand the post he shared with his 8.9 million followers and misread it as a statement that the ban on Israel had already happened.

The football pundit revealed that he follows the Instagram account of a ten-year-old girl, Renad Attallah, who lives in the Gaza Strip and posts about daily life there. The footage of the war makes him “cry on a regular basis,” he said.

“It’s just got worse and worse, hasn’t it? There’s nothing we can do. You feel a bit helpless. I mean, it’s awful. I don’t know how you can be on a side on this, other than the side of the children and the side of the women and the innocent people that are being killed constantly now.”

Lineker announced in November that he would step down as host of Match of the Day at the end of this season after 25 years as host as is believed to be focusing on podcast business Goalhanger.

In March 2023, he was suspended from the airwaves after he tweeted that the language used around Conservative immigration policy “is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.