Former professional footballer, English sports broadcaster, and Israel-hater Gary Lineker is in hot water again, this time for posting to his Instagram stories an Instagram video on Zionism that featured an emoji of a rat.
The Match Of The Day Presenter posted the story clip from group Palestine Lobby which, titled “Zionism explained in less than 2 min” contained a circled illustration of the animal.
The use of the term rat in association with Jewish people has been widely recognised as antisemitic, with it being used as an insult to describe the race by Nazi Germany.
The former England football captain deleted the post from his profile as soon he saw the image, Lineker’s agent said.
When asked if Lineker thought he had made a mistake, the agent told The Independent: “The fact he has taken it down would illustrate that…. he clearly made an error posting. He didn’t see the image. He made an error.”
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Despite deleting the post, the 64-year-old, who is the BBC’s top earner, has drawn criticism from Jewish and campaign groups that combat antisemitism. There are also growing calls for the Lineker to now leave the corporation.
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Lineker is stepping down from hosting Match Of The Day at the end of the current football season, but will present FA Cup coverage and the 2026 World Cup for the BBC.
Here is a screen capture of what Lineker shared:
Nothing to see here.
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) May 12, 2025
Just Gary Lineker’s Instagram account sharing an anti-Israel video misrepresenting Zionism, complete with a rat emoji. pic.twitter.com/ysuVGH52SN
The idea that “he didn’t see the image” is laughable. You cannot miss it, and if he is that blind, he shouldn’t be covering any football whatsoever, on the grounds of poor eyesight!
But of course, I call BS and believe Lineker knew exactly what he was sharing. When he was called out last year on his posts, he also feigned ignorance:
I spluttered that I 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.
“I’m thinking about the women hostages who are probably still being raped,” I said. “I’m thinking about the babies being killed,” he countered. “I just want peace.”
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He said that he wasn’t tweeting on October 7 – and when he looked at Twitter on October 8 he was surprised to find that he was trending. He made out that he was trying to only retweet neutral things. I explained that people whose tweets he’d liked had red triangles in their names and that signified a support for Hamas. He didn’t know, he said.
If he is truly this ignorant and blind, best he shut the f*** up, wouldn’t you think?
Alas, I really do believe now he is an antisemite, so even more so.
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