Netflix condemned for Gary Lineker deal after he quit BBC over sharing post about Zionism with rat image

Several campaign groups have angrily criticised the project including the US-based lobby group the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera).

Camera CEO Kurt Schwartz said: “Mr Lineker has not just been guilty of the odd awkward remark, but has routinely used his platform to spread lies and vitriol about Israel.

Referring to the death of a Palestinian footballer, who it emerged was a Hamas terrorist and whose demise Lineker lamented on social media, Schwartz said: “He has failed to apologise for mourning a Hamas terrorist, defended the BBC's surreptitious use of a Hamas-affiliated narrator in programming about Gaza, and shared a video about Zionism that included antisemitic rat imagery.”

“That Netflix would offer Lineker a megaphone despite his sordid track record, even as the BBC rightly distances itself from him, is a slap in the face to its customers, Jewish and otherwise. Hateful rhetoric should be marginalised. Netflix is doing the opposite."

Netflix will carry Lineker’s hugely popular podcast The Rest is Football, which he co-hosts with fellow former footballers Alan Shearer and Michah Richards during next year's World Cup being held in US, Canada and Mexico. The show will be filmed in New York and available worldwide.

Announcing the project, Lineker said: “It is a fantastic opportunity for the three of us to do what we love - talk football every day - but on a truly global stage".

"Expect all the usual analysis, honesty and plenty of laughs... just with a few more cameras pointed at us, all from the Big Apple."

The storm that led to Lineker, 65, quitting the BBC role he held for 26 years erupted in May when a video entitled “Zionism explained in less than 2 mins” originally posted by activist group called Palestine Lobby was reposted onto his Instagram story. The video featured an emoji of a rat, a symbol notoriously used against Jews by the Nazis.

Lineker – at that point the BBC’s highest-paid star – denied that he noticed the rat image, and he said he was unaware of the historical connotations of the rat, especially its use by the Nazis to demonise Jews during the Holocaust.

As a backlash built, he issued an apology, saying: "On Instagram I reposted material which I have since learned contained offensive references, I very much regret these references.”

He insisted he would “never knowingly share anything antisemitic” and said he had deleted the Instagram post “as soon as I became aware of the issue”.

The broadcaster added: “It was an error on my part for which I apologise unreservedly.”

But Lineker, who won the best TV presenter accolade at the National Television Awards four months after his Match of The Day exit, is no stranger to controversy.

On October 7 the only post that appeared on his social media was one that declared jovially “Super Spurs are top of the league”. When an interviewer later suggested he appeared to have more sympathy for the Palestinian victims of war than he did for the Israelis, he said: “Obviously October 7 was awful, but it’s very important to know your history and to study the massacres that happened prior to this, many of them against the Palestinian people. Yes, Israelis have a right to defend themselves. But it appears that Palestinians don’t – and that is where it’s wrong.”

In December, 2022 he lamented the death of a member of a West Bank Palestinian football club, Ahmed Daraghmeh, who was killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers in Nablus. It later emerged that he had been killed during an attack on Jews who had been visiting the reputed site of Joseph’s tomb. On its Arabic website, Hamas referred to Daraghmeh as a mujahid, meaning fighter or warrior.

And in March 2023, Lineker was temporarily taken off air by the BBC after a post on his X account compared the UK’s government’s asylum policy to rhetoric used in 1930s Germany.

More recently, in February this year he was among a raft of famous names to sign a letter criticising the BBC for dropping the controversial documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

Investigator and campaigner David Collier found that one of the teens prominently featured, Abdullah Al-Yazouri, was the son of a minister in the Hamas government.

Commenting on the Netflix deal, a spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism said: "It is extraordinary that celebrities can get away with so much because corporations are desperate to profit from their brand.

“By pursuing this deal, Netflix is not merely saying that Jews don't count: They are saying that conduct like Mr Lineker's deserves to be rewarded. That is despicable."

A spokesperson for Labour Against Antisemtisim said: “Despite Gary Lineker sharing Nazi-era racist content to his 1.2 million followers, he was permitted to complete the season presenting Match of the Day before departing to a fanfare.

“Now Netflix have rewarded him with an even more lucrative global deal, despite his pattern of poor judgement.”

A representative for Lineker declined to comment.

Netflix has been approached for a response.