20 January 2024 , 12:26
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Gary Lineker has claimed that he received threats after reposting and then deleting a post on X that called for Israel to be banned from sporting events.
The Match of the Day presenter was widely criticised for sharing the post by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel - but Lineker’s camp said he had misread it initially before undoing his repost.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, Lineker said he “received threats. But it’s not about me. I am not the victim here.”
Lineker says he has reduced the amount of time he spends on X and described the online discussion around the Israel-Hamas war as “so toxic” and said the sight of so many innocent children being killed as making him “feel sick.”
He said: “Everybody I talk to, every single person I know, is going: ‘What? What is happening?’ But the minute you open your mouth – well, not my mouth, but the minute I tweet a little bit – it’s so toxic.
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“If you lean to one side or the other, the levels of attack are extraordinary. How could it be controversial to want peace? I just don’t understand it. You don’t need to be Islamophobic to condemn Hamas, or antisemitic to condemn Israel. But at the moment it’s just awful. Awful.”
The former England and Leicester City striker was almost sacked by the BBC last year because of a backlash to a post he made about then home secretary Suella Braverman, comparing her rhetoric around immigration to 1930s Germany.
That led to Match of the Day being aired without any commentators or pundits as employees rowed in behind the host, who earns £1.35m per year from the corporation as a freelancer, before the issue was resolved following high-level talks and Lineker was reinstated.
In the Guardian interview Lineker also claimed that sections of the media was “weirdly, oddly obsessed with trying to do me”. He added that certain outlets were “trying to like, put me away. They take everything out of context. Deliberately. It’s almost like a game for them to try to destroy me in some way. It’s very odd.”
He is spending an increasing amount of time working on podcasts, via his Goalhanger producton company, and said he was enjoying the ability to consider issues in a long-form, more nuanced fashion. “They can go into things in depth. Most of my Twitter posts now are trailing Match of the Day or my podcasts.”