Gary Lineker shames BBC over Gaza bias

The BBC's claims of impartiality over Palestine are risible.

So few public figures have spoken out against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, and that includes here in Britain, despite the British government’s complicity in arming and facilitating that genocide.

One exception is Gary Lineker, longtime footballer, popular sports presenter, and a household name for many decades.

And he’s been vilified for it - including for sharing my own content on the genocide (I’ll come on to that).

He was interviewed by Amol Rajan, who used to be my boss when I was at The Independent. It’s worth listening to this whole clip.

In the words of the award-winning journalist Richard Sanders:

This is absolutely humiliating - Amol Raja , who, as a presenter on the Today programme, has one of the most powerful jobs in British media, lectured on basic journalism by a man whose job it is to talk about football.

Rajan's comments encapsulate everything that is wrong with the BBC's coverage of Gaza. Impartiality doesn't involve identifying 2 political positions and coming down half way between them.

As Gary Lineker has to point out to him - it's to do with facts.

A few things. Amol Rajan said the BBC was required to offer context, and that included, to quote him:

The Israeli position is that what's happening in Gaza is a response to the slaughter and capture of innocent Israelis on October 7th.

OK, a very straightforward question here. Would he have said - “Hamas would argue that what happened on 7th October is a response to the slaughter and capture of innocent Palestinians”?

After all, in 2023 alone prior to 7th October, 240 Palestinians, including more than 40 children, had been killed. Between 2008 and 6th October 2023 alone, 6,343 Palestinians had been killed, including 1,416 children.

And since 1967, an estimated 1 million Palestinians have been “arrested” by the Israeli state. That doesn’t just include those put through kangaroo military courts, with trials headed by judges who are also Israeli soldiers, with those trials lasting minutes and being conducted in Hebrew, including with confessions signed under pressure and indeed often after torture and sexual abuse, with a conviction rate over 99%.

It should be noted, too, that children are put through these absurd trials, because Israel is only the state which routinely tries children in military courts.

But I’m also referring to administrative detention, where Israel can detain Palestinians without trial or charge at all. These are Palestinians who are captured, often in the dead of night from their traumatised families, who are often left with no knowledge of where they are being kept.

So as it happens Hamas did argue that 7th October was, to paraphrase Amol Rajan, “a response to the slaughter and capture of innocent Palestinians.”

But what Amol Rajan’s response to that argument? I would bet everything I have that he would dismiss this argument as invalid and illegitimate on the grounds that Hamas committed war crimes on 7th October which no context can justify.

And so we are back once again at that brilliant adage ‘nothing can justify 7th October, but everything can be justified by 7th October’. After all, there is no question war crimes were committed on 7th October, just as there is no question that Israel’s war crimes are far far far deadlier, far more destructive, far more systematic, that they have happened every single day now for 564 days, and that they exist within the context of an overall crime, which is the illegal decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.

The obvious response to me here is - well, the BBC isn’t endorsing Israel’s official position. No, but the BBC clearly believes that this is a credible and legitimate argument. It does not believe that this is a credible and legitimate argument when made by Hamas.

As the former BBC presenter Karisma Patel - who resigned from the Corporation - puts it:

“Impartiality has become an excuse for poor journalism, for imposing false balance and washing one’s hands of the backbreaking work of following the evidence. I saw this firsthand while I was in BBC newsrooms. “Controversial” story areas - Gaza, migration - were subjected to this 50/50 debate format because few were brave enough to reach evidence-based conclusions about what’s actually going on and who’s culpable. BBC News it’s time to stop hiding behind this “neutral observer” myth and start doing the work. Gary Lineker gets it.”

A key point invoked by Lineker is that famous phrase about journalism:

If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.

Countless statements of genocidal intent and criminal intent issued by Israeli leaders and officials are not reported on by the BBC, let alone their coverage shaped around those statements as revealing the nature of what Israel is actually doing/

On the other hand, when it comes to atrocities, the BBC repeatedly treats Israeli claims and denials treated as credible despite Israel’s long history of deceit.

While the horrors of 7th October were described as such - complete with emotive words like ‘massacre’ - not so with the far, far greater number of atrocities committed against Palestinians since. Multiple atrocities are not even reported on. Far greater weight attached to Israeli life than Palestinian life - we could go on.

As for that comparison made by Lineker with Russia and Ukraine. It’s easy to find an example here, such as when a BBC presenter concludes an interview with a Ukrainian politician by noting continuing fighting and stating: “so our thoughts are with you.”

Has a BBC presenter ever said those words when interviewing a Palestinian? No, Palestinian guests are instead interrogated and treated practically as though they’re in the dock,.

The fact is the BBC has not stuck to the facts or impartiality. It has airbrushed a genocide, erasing the facts in the process. Gary Lineker has told the truth here and he has far more journalistic integrity than BBC management.

I would note that Gary Lineker was embroiled in a firestorm back in November 2023 because he shared a clip of my interview with Raz Segal, an Israeli-American associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, adding simply ‘worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’

The Times newspaper reported this at the time with the headline ‘BBC staff’s anger after Gary Lineker shares Israel-Gaza ‘genocide’ video’

One paragraph read as follows:

The post caused dismay among BBC staff. One raised concerns that it would be “bloody awful” for any Jewish colleagues that have to work with Lineker. “It’s pretty shit for any Jew having to work with quite a few folk here right now,” they added.

Here was a classic example of the absurdity of conflating Israel with Jewish people. Because what is being argued here - it would a trauma for Jewish people to work with Lineker because he shared the thoughts of a Jewish Israeli expert in Holocaust and genocide studies?

The truth is actually so many public figures know a terrible evil is being committed and they chose not to speak out. History will damn them, just as it will praise the likes of Gary Lineker.