Gary Lineker isn’t an antisemite but his carelessness has consequences

There was a time when I cheered for Gary Lineker. I was a Tottenham fan born and bred and Lineker was a hero to those of us who made our way to White Hart Lane every other week.

Today, the cheering has become more of a painful sigh. The former England great, long-time pundit and presenter, and podcast pioneer, has announced his departure from the BBC. The immediate reason was a re-posting on his Instagram account, where he has 1.2 million followers, of a pro-Palestine video that criticized Zionism. And included an illustration of a rat.

For those unaware of the meaning, a rat has long been used by anti-Semites to characterize Jews, and the Nazis made entire films where the people they were murdering were depicted as harmful rodents.

Lineker removed the video as soon as complaints were made, said that he would “never knowingly share anything antisemitic” and has since apologised and affirmed his hatred of antisemitism. I believe him. I know Jewish people who are his friends, and doubt that antisemitism is anywhere in his character. But in his eagerness to support something that condemned Israel he failed to check, think, and empathise. Would he have been so careless if another minority was involved? It was disgusting. Frankly, I also fear that his resignation will give ammunition to the genuine Jew-haters out there, who will moan on once again about Jewish power and manipulation.

This disorder is something I’ve been aware of most of my life because three of my grandparents were Jewish. The first time I realised that three-quarters was more than enough was when I was a child and ordered out of a friend’s house by his father because I was “A f****** Jew!” Antisemitism ebbs and flows but never evaporates, and it’s taken on a new energy with the grotesque situation in Israel and Palestine.

The degree and extent of old-style antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism is overwhelming

This isn’t the place for a full analysis of the Middle East, but nobody can watch the hellish scenes from Gaza and not react with horror. Including, of course, many Jewish people, including many Israelis who regularly protest against their government. But for a number of critics of Israel, including some we see on our streets, there is no such thing as a good Israeli. It’s reductive, racist, and ultimately make peace even more difficult.

Even more worrying is when anger at Israeli actions bleeds over to hatred of Jewish people. The idea that every supporter of Palestine is an antisemite is absurd and dangerous, but the notion that there are no antisemites within the pro-Palestine movement is absurdly naïve. If you doubt me, take a deep breath and spend some time on social media. The degree and extent of old-style antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism is overwhelming.

From a Christian point of view, it is similarly complex. There are Christian Zionists who support Israel in almost anything it does, but then there are Christians who understand the legacy of church antisemitism. It’s a history soaked in expulsions, blood libels, pogroms often sanctified by clergy, and even the Shoah. The Nazis may have been pagan in ideology but read Martin Luther’s hideous statements about Jews, and be aware of the way Jewish people were regarded in Christian Europe even until the 1930s. If Christians has treated Jews properly, there’s a very good chance that Israel would never have been founded.

But there are also Christians who come to a pro-Palestine position not because of sympathy for a suffering people but due to a rejection and dislike of Jews. There are a few high-profile cases in Britain, there are more than a few in North America.

Yet true followers of the Jewish Jesus, readers of the Jewish Paul, Mark, Matthew, and John, believers in the predictions and fulfilment of the Jewish Old Testament have an unbreakable and inevitable link to the Jews. Whether they realise this is another matter, and some of the comments about “the Jews” in our Bible readings, especially over Easter, can be misunderstood and cause dreadful harm. It’s no coincidence that eastern European massacres of Jews, even as late as the early 20th-century, frequently took place at Easter. How in God’s name those brutes could have acted thus and still have regarded themselves as Christian is beyond me.

Our call is to justice, mercy, and peace. Speak up for the oppressed, persecuted, and bullied. All of them. I do wonder why there was so little talk, so few marches, about the slaughtered Kurds, about the countless Yazidis murdered, enslaved, raped, sold like animals, about the mass murder of Arab people by their own governments, about persecuted Christians. Selective outrage? Possibly. But perhaps because Israel is involved, Israel is a Jewish state, and the old hatreds die hard. We must do better than that. God commands it.