Gary Lineker - foot in mouth again

[onegrumpyoldwoman]

I wish this guy would stick to football or selling crisps

Most recently, he gave an interview to Medhi Hassan (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/12/lineker-appears-to-call-oct-7-attacks-the-hamas-thing/ ) where he appeared to minimise the October 7th Hamas attacks as “the Hamas thing”, whilst falsely stating of the war in Gaza “I can’t think of anything that I’ve seen worse in my lifetime”. This statement is absurd hyperbole given that Mr Lineker was born in 1960 and has hence lived through major wars such as Vietnam, Iraq, Iran-Iraq, the Soviet and Western interventions in Afghanistan, and the Syrian Civil War, all of which have cost hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions, of lives.

I do not believe that it is compatible with Mr Lineker’s role as a presenter on Match of the Day, and hence an employee of our national public broadcaster, which is supposed to be politically impartial, for him to take such outspoken stances.

He acknowledged Oct 7. He didn't centre it but he didn't ignore it.

Was that “the Hamas thing” @TextureSeeker or did he say more? That’s all I heard reported but I didn’t listen to the full interview so happy to be corrected.

No it wasn't. The 'Hamas thing' was separate.

Pretty sure he didn't say "the Hamas thing"

Happy to be proved wrong. Well, not happy, but YSWIM.

He said ""Obviously, we all know October 7 happened but the minute you raise your voice against what they're now doing you get accused of being a supporter of Hamas and this kind of stuff."

There are people who think that the suffering of Jewish people is being ignored and there are people who think that the suffering of Palestinian people is being ignored.

Are there genuinely many every day people, who only see the suffering of one side?

While we argue about who said or didn’t say what, there are people in Gaza being killed for the simple fact they live there, hostages still being held by Hamas, and hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim people are rising.

And while we (the public) get ourselves all (understandably) worked up and become further divided as tensions heighten, what the fuck are our leaders doing to unite us and stop this hatred which is spreading like a disease?

All we got was Rishi Sunaks shitty political speech which literally achieved nothing and listed a load of potential control measures, which might be useful if there was also some sort of plan to address the actual reasons for there being so much upset and high emotions and with an idea of how to manage this. But no, it all started with the protests apparently, and this could be dealt with via increasing control over the terrible public. It was absolutely nothing to do with the government supporting the mass killing of civilians. Funny isn’t it that civilians would be upset about that. Funny isn’t it that his speech actually probably resulted in more division. I don’t want to vilify Rishi Sunak here because we obviously don’t live in a dictatorship and it could be a lot worse, but surely somebody needs to do better, because I’m not sure things are getting better.

What is the plan? Does anybody actually know????

Such gravitas. Such moral seriousness. How is the man not our prime minister????😂

Given the scale of the marches, social media reach, the fact every other celebrity are showing their support is be amazed at anyone claiming the suffering of Gazans is being ignored

However violent antisemitism is sharply on the rise and this is directly linked to October 7th. You can’t show support for Jewish people without being called a Zionist (like it’s an insult) or being told you support genocide. Pro-Palestinians have NO interest in the suffering of Jewish people IME and only want to know the Jews whose views align with theirs, and use this as an example of ‘allyship’ when it isn’t.

I don’t know anyone who didn’t think that Rishi Sunak’s speech was a total joke. He is NOT an ally of Jewish people - he just uses us as a way of saying “Ahoy Jews! Over here! I’m not antisemitic like that Labour bunch, see I did a speech outside no 10!” and Jews just went “ STFU”. Sunak cannot physically give an opinion on anything without trashing Labour, it’s his MO and this is just an extension of that. In my humble opinion anyway.

TBH if he can’t even condemn October 7 that does make me think he’s very “meh” about it

“Ahoy Jews! Over here! I’m not antisemitic like that Labour bunch, see I did a speech outside no 10!” and Jews just went “STFU”

😂

100%

@YaMuvva "TBH if he can’t even condemn October 7 that does make me think he’s very “meh” about it"

Nobody is "meh" about October 7.

Oh I assure you they are

I am assuming that nobody ever talks about the atrocity of October 7 without also talking about the atrocity of civilian deaths in Gaza.

Quite a few of us thought STFU......🙄

I’m listening to Shani Louk’s father on R4, with slight delay

no words

Two hypothetical questions, probably directed more at anti-Israel posters than others, but interested what people think..

1. If Hamas could have killed 30000 civilians on October 7th, do you think they would have?

2. If Israel could eliminate Hamas as a fighting force without killing a single civilian do you think they wouldn't?

Answers -

1.Yes

2.We need to be careful with this question as it seems to be posed as a double negative.
I think that if the IDF could have removed Hamas (fighters and organisers ) by capturing and imprisoning them all without any civilian casualties, then they would have done so.

.

True. Hamas uses civilians as shields after all. Including children. And they don't wear uniforms so hard to identify them.

Utter bastards.

"

1. If Hamas could have killed 30000 civilians on October 7th, do you think they would have?"

Do you not know what is in the Hamas charter??

They are intent on killing all Jews. Their frenzied killing on 7th October was gleeful and triumphant.

Agree

Yes the answer to that one is everyone

more at anti-Israel posters

I'm not aware of any anti-Israel posters. Just because people disagree with Netanyahu and the IDFs activities in Gaza does not mean they are anti Israel, we need to be careful with the language we use.

That folks can watch an apartheid state annihilate thousands of innocent children before our eyes, and quibble about a football presenter’s employment contract, blows my fucking mind.

Yes wasn't sure how to phrase that. I was more curious about the answers from those who are fully against Israel's military actions in Gaza.

Was it a particularly big explosion?