Gary Lineker has been criticised after retweeting a call for Israel to be banned from international football.
The Match of the Day presenter has sparked anger among MPs and Jewish leaders who are calling for the BBC to intervene and sanction the former footballer.
Lineker shared a statement on social media from a pro-Palestinian campaign which suggested Israel should be banned from all global tournaments and games “until it ends its grave violations of international law."
Tory MPs have now said they were waiting for "international diplomat and foreign policy expert, Gary Lineker" to condemn Hamas.
Gary Lineker has been criticised after retweeting a call for Israel to be banned from international footballPAIt is the latest impartiality row to swamp the BBC over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The tweet Lineker reposted on Saturday was from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel.
The post also featured a statement from the Palestinian Football Association which called on Fifa and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to join all regional and global sporting bodies in sanctioning Israel.
The statement demanded that they “take an urgent stance towards Israel’s grave violations of human rights and subject it to legal accountability measures”.
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It added that Fifa and the IOC should be pressured "to suspend Israel’s membership and ban it from international tournaments and games until it ends its grave violations of international law, particularly its apartheid rule and the crime of genocide it is perpetuating in Gaza."
It comes after Israel launched a military bombardment of Gaza in a bid to wipe out Hamas following their October 7 attack which killed 1,400 Israelis.
Israel's retaliatory operation in Gaza is believed to have killed 9,300 civilians and injured 3,600.
Lineker shared a statement on social media from a pro-Palestinian campaign which suggested Israel should be banned from all global tournaments and games 'until it ends its grave violations of international law'
"Gary Lineker is an ill-informed, ignorant commentator on the Middle East," Andrew Percy, a prominent Jewish Tory MP, told The Telegraph.
"The BDS movement [to boycott Israel] is a racist, anti-Semitic campaign and nobody who receives taxpayers’ money working in the BBC should be endorsing a campaign that is widely understood to promote Jew hate.
GB News presenter Lee Anderson said: "Licence fee payers are fed up of footing the bill for Lineker’s musings on international politics. It’s about time BBC bosses decided whether Gary’s right-on rubbish is in keeping with their social media rulebook."
A BBC source said: "We aren’t going to give a commentary on individuals or individual tweets."
