Brendan O'Neill: Accusing Israel of genocide is despicable doublethink
Gary Lineker is taking the piss now, isn’t he? He’s had his knuckles rapped by the BBC numerous times for sharing his centrist-dad blather online. For using the public platform gifted to him by us licence-fee payers – on pain of criminal conviction – to advertise his milquetoast views that most people think are bollocks. And yet now, in studied defiance of his bosses, he’s given voice to his most ignorant political opinion yet. To a dinner-party prejudice that isn’t only irritating but will feel genuinely hurtful to many who are forced by law to make Lineker rich. He’s tweeted a link to a video in which Israel is accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians.Stephen Pollard: I thought we had reached peak Gary Lineker. I was wrong Bad Medicine
Yes, as if Israel hadn’t suffered enough at the murderous hands of Hamas, now it must endure the indignity of a football pundit wondering out loud if it might be guilty of the worst war crime of all. What next, Wayne Rooney sitting in judgement on the Democratic Republic of Congo? ‘Worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time’, said the Match of the Day presenter turned amateur Hague sleuth in his retweet of a conversation between the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Raz Segal, an associate professor of genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey. In that chat, Segal says that what Israel is doing in Gaza is a ‘textbook genocide’. Textbook. That is, it conforms precisely to the definition of genocide, which is the murder of a large number of people from an ethnic group with the aim of destroying that ethnic group. This is what Lineker is sharing to his 8.9million followers on X. The lie that the Jewish State has a bloodlust to vaporise all Palestinians.
This is serious, no? Mr Lineker is a representative of Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC. He is the face of BBC Sport. Did he not stop to think how the Jewish section of the public might feel about his sharing of a clip damning Israel as genocidal? Did it not cross his mind that our Jewish citizens who are compelled to pay his wages might now feel a lesser part of ‘the public’ that the Beeb is meant to embody? The vast majority of British Jews support Israel (if not the Netanyahu government). They consider it ‘the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people’. Call me a contrarian, but I think people paid by the public to provide a service to the public ought not to alienate any section of that public by sharing inflammatory ideological claims.
We can now see how stunningly lacking in virtue the virtue-signallers are. When Hamas fascists launched their pogrom against Israel on 7 October, Lineker said nothing. On the day itself, this bloke who loves to wring his hands over bad things said nowt about the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. He did find time to congratulate Spurs for getting to the top of the league, though. The next day, too, not a whisper. Finally, on 9 October, he said something. Kind of. He tweeted a link to a new episode of The Rest is Politics in which his mates, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, talked about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Given his keen interest in events that apparently echo the 1930s – he famously accused then home secretary Suella Braverman of using ‘language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s’ – it was striking he had so little to say about an atrocity that really did echo the 1930s.
On Oct. 7, Hamas unleashed a barbaric terrorist attack against Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, including more than 30 Americans. The event was unprecedented in its scale and cruelty in a country that is no stranger to terrorism. Still, it was not met with universal condemnation. Rather, a nontrivial number of Americans either justified or even celebrated the attacks. Such responses were especially prevalent within the elite universities that popular imagination historically upholds as a bulwark against religious and ethnic bigotry, and mostly occurred with impunity.
Medicine has eagerly adopted the same type of identity politics that have come to define the policies, sensibilities, and ideologies of Ivy League universities, where diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) officials have essentially served as a political commissariat, articulating and enforcing identity politics orthodoxy. Indeed, medical training and practice is fertile ground for antisemitism to flourish. Looking at explicit acts of antisemitism from health care providers in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, we observe that doctors are among those who have engaged in some of the most egregious displays of antisemitism, and that they are not regularly punished for their conduct. Second, we examined the responses of professional medical associations and medical schools to Hamas’ attack against Israel compared to their response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Leading medical institutions treat the world’s only Jewish state differently from other U.S. allies even though Americans overall have warmer feelings toward Israel than Ukraine.
If we want to understand why medical professionals are drawn to acts of antisemitism despite their advanced levels of education, we need to look at what their medical associations and schools are teaching them. Those institutions not only advance an ideology that facilitates Jew hatred, they demonstrate by the example of their public statements that they hold Jews and the Jewish state to a different standard.
Assuredly, the great majority of medical practitioners have made no public statements or made benign remarks that did not warrant news coverage. Still, Stop Antisemitism, an organization that calls attention to public displays of antisemitism, has recorded many medical practitioners whose speech or conduct related to recent events clearly demonstrate untrammeled Jew hatred. The fact that some of those health professionals were subsequently disciplined by their employers is reassuring. But the fact that so many would feel the urge and freedom to engage in overt Jew hatred despite their advanced professional training is alarming.
David Collier: Verifying BBC (Hamas) propaganda – presenting exhibit A
This article published yesterday is a perfect example of how the BBC goes out of its way to demonise Israel – and the means through which it does so. If ever BBC executives are forced to stand before a panel at an inquiry – this should be one of the articles they need to explain.
It seems so benign. A human interest story about Gazan footballers who have been trapped by the conflict and could not play in the Palestine v Australia World Cup qualifier that took place yesterday (Australia won 1-0):
The BBC is not a local town newspaper. When looking at an article such as this – we need to analyse the motivation behind it warranting exposure to the BBC’s massive audience. Did the BBC put a team on this because it was such an important story that it needed to be reported – or is another dynamic at work; are they scrambling around for stories that demonise Israel – and this article got the green light only because it could potentially tick so many anti-Israel boxes?
Time to have a closer look.
Test 1 – is the pillar of the story true
We have no way of fully verifying the story. And importantly – nor did the BBC. But we can look at the evidence available:
Three Gazan footballers were named.
Ibrahim Abuimeir(FB)
Ahmed Kullab (FB)
Khaled Al-Nabris (FB)
The BBC tells us that these three footballers ‘should have been training for the World Cup Qualifiers’ and we are then told that Ibrahim is described by his trainers ‘as one of the star defenders of the Palestinian team’,
Well that is a fact we can check. This is the number of times those three players have played for the Palestine National Team: Ibrahim Abuimeir = zero (u23 appearances)
Ahmed Kullab = zero (u23 appearances)
Khaled Al-Nabris = zero (u23 appearances)
None of them have ever played for the national team at senior level before. It is true they have performed at the U-23 level – and are part of the set-up for next year’s olympics – but that is not the same thing. There is no evidence AT ALL – these players were all going to be called up for the world cup qualifiers. In fact – evidence was found to suggest they would NOT BE as Abuimeir only recently turned professional and remains part of the 2024 Olympic u23 plans.
There is more. The Palestinian team doesn’t play many youngsters. In the current squad only one player is under the age of 23 (naturally a forward). The squad has NO DEFENDERS under the age of 24 (also quite normal for anyone who understands football). Two of the trapped Gazan players are defenders. Abuimeir (just turned 21) and Kullab (Just turned 22).
The BBC argument is that these three extremely young players – all coincidentally trapped in Gaza – none of whom have ever played for the national team before – were due to be in the World Cup squad. This story is nonsense.
We can say certainly that the description of Abuimeir in the headline as one of Palestine’s star defenders is *blatantly untrue*.
One other point of note. The BBC also relies on the words of Ehab Abu Jazar – a coach of the Palestinian team. This is what Abu Jazar posted on the morning of the 7th October. In this post he suggests that if someone does not see the events of Oct 7 as a great thing- then they are not really Palestinian. Perhaps FIFA need to look closely at him:
