Event: Lineker

Lineker’s bug-eyed hatred for Israel confirms that it isn’t only kids who get radicalised online. Everyone frets about teen boys who are lured into the manosphere. I’m more worried about the grown-ass adults who have tumbled down the moral toilet of Israelophobia. At least the dim kids who hang on Andrew Tate’s every word have the excuse of being at the mercy of their own hormones. What excuse do the Gazaholic grown-ups have for gorging so ferally from the digital trough of anti-Israel bullshit? Exhibit A: Gary Lineker. His grey matter has sizzled to a crisp on the bonfire of Israel-hate. Now he’s sharing posts likening Zionism to Nazism. He has been so radicalised by the anti-Israel slop that clogs up the digital highway that he’s echoing the vilest of all the anti-Zionist tropes – namely, that the Jewish nation has become the moral mimic of history’s most notorious Jew killers. It was on his Instagram page. He reposted a speech by the anti-Israel nutjob, Tony Greenstein. Greenstein had been charged with inviting support for Hamas, which is a proscribed organisation in the UK. He was cleared at Kingston Crown Court last week. On the steps of the court, he let rip in his usual histrionic fashion against the Zionist project. ‘Zionism’, he squeaked more than thundered, ‘is in the tradition of the Nazis’. Imagine seeing such dribbling bigotry and thinking: ‘I should share that.’ That’s what Lineker did. It gets worse. The Greenstein clip was posted by CAGE International, an iffy outfit that campaigns on behalf of Muslims affected by the ‘war on terror’. These are the weirdos who once called Mohammed Emwazi, also known as ‘Jihadi John’, a ‘beautiful young man’. He’s the British-Muslim traitor who trekked to Syria to become chief executioner for those sworn foes of…