Lineker well wide of the mark in sharing anti-Israel activist’s video

Mr White has written about how he “understands” why people are antisemitic as a result of the “state of Israel, its ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians.” He also attempted to explain Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s infamous Holocaust denial, saying that the Iranian president’s use of the word “myth” to describe the Holocaust was not necessarily referring to something untrue, but to something that has become “imbued with symbolic meaning.”

Mr Lineker doubtless means well. There is nothing wrong with watching a video like that and being upset about seeing young people being arrested - – even if, as has been pointed out, showing a video of the arrests and not the preceding activities is a bit like giving a book to someone with the first hundred pages ripped out.. Furthermore, a subsequent video, filmed from a different angle, strongly suggests that what was described as a "cage" and referenced by Mr Lineker as such was not, in fact, a cage at all - though there is no doubt that he shared it in good faith. 

However, what he may not realise is that his outraged response is the result of a meticulously orchestrated process.

Here’s how it works. Firstly, young Palestinians are urged to throw rocks, Molotov cocktails and other things at Israelis – both soldiers and civilians. A number of Israelis have died as a result of such attacks.

Soon afterwards, Israeli soldiers arrest these youths for their actions – right in front of the suddenly active cameras of “human rights” groups like B’Tselem.

Videos of the arrests are then distributed around social media by pro-Palestinian activists, in the hope of getting people – celebrities in particular, to bite. And with Mr Lineker, they hit the jackpot.