Gary Lineker and Mo Salah's ‘we can't hear you' hypocrisy is plain to see

Telegraph

4 days ago

'We can't hear you, Uefa,' wrote Gary Lineker, outraged that European football's governing body had not acknowledged the alleged circumstances of the death of Suleiman al-Obeid, aka the 'Palestinian Pele'. According to the Palestine Football Association (PFA), the 41-year-old was killed while waiting for humanitarian aid last week in the south of the Gaza Strip. Of all the subjects on which to claim a conspiracy of silence, this was surely not Lineker 's wisest choice. After all, when 1,195 Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7, 2023, nobody could hear him either. On the occasion of the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the one sally on social media by the self-appointed moral conscience of the game was the observation: 'Super Spurs are top of the league.'
Almost two years on, his suggestion that Uefa is under some urgent imperative to tell the world about what happened to Al-Obeid feels at best naive, at worst cynical in its inconsistency. Strictly speaking, there was no need for anybody in Nyon to address the issue publicly, given Palestine's affiliation to the Asian confederation, outside Uefa's jurisdiction. But Aleksander Ceferin, pathologically averse to anything that could be construed as political, still offered a lavish tribute, reflecting in a statement attributed to the president: 'His talent and dedication gave the children of Gaza and beyond hope in a brighter tomorrow.'
In stark contrast, the murder at the Nova music festival of Lior Asulin, a striker who played at the highest level in his home country for Hapoel Tel Aviv and Beitar Jerusalem, passed entirely without Uefa comment 22 months ago, despite Israel falling within its orbit. Asulin even competed in its own competition, turning out six times in 2007 for Hapoel in the Uefa Cup. But for 674 days the details of his death – he was killed by Hamas terrorists at a rave where he had been celebrating his 43rd birthday – have gone wholly unremarked by Ceferin, or indeed by Lineker.
In fairness, Lineker is far from the only influential figure imploring Uefa to broadcast the Palestinian narrative around how Al-Obeid died. Mohamed Salah also took the organisation to task, replying to the 'Palestinian Pele' message: 'Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?' That intervention was swiftly amplified by Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who refused to condemn Hamas in the aftermath of October 7. 'Well done Mo!' he said. While there is no doubting the sincerity of Salah's sentiments, his contributions have followed the Lineker playbook in terms of only conveying one side of the story. In a rare non-sponsored video message, released just 11 days after the Hamas atrocities, he did not mention Israel once, instead focusing only on the escalating Israeli response and a call to open a humanitarian corridor into Gaza.
There is a sense that Salah's anger on this front would be better directed against his own government in Egypt, rather than an avowedly apolitical body like Uefa. Egypt has adopted a hardline opposition to allowing vulnerable Palestinians to cross the Rafah border crossing into Sinai, denying them a temporary safe haven on the grounds that Israel might never permit them to go back. Mohamed Farid, an Egyptian senator, has argued that the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza would merely fuel support for Hamas's extremist ideology and exacerbate tensions throughout the region. Surely Salah, well-intentioned though he might be, would be better advised to engage with this school of thought in his homeland, rather than to play to the gallery online.
Sadly, it is only performative antics that cut through in his sphere. Take Lineker's recent comment, addressing the sharing of an anti-Semitic rat emoji that hastened his exit from the BBC, that he was 'anti-the killing of children'. It read as another appeal for secular sainthood, another reminder that he was on the side of the angels. 'I come from a place of complete impartiality,' he declared. If only. Sadly, the problem with his pieties is that they have been filtered through a distinct ideological prism. He is the radicalised product of social networks, seeing fit to peddle the sophomoric propaganda of Owen Jones as if it were inscribed on tablets of stone. He is interested in truth only as far as it corresponds with his preconceived version of truth.
This is why the pressure on Uefa to give more specifics about Al-Obeid feels so opportunistic. For a start, we will perhaps never know the definitive version of his death: where the PFA has said he was killed by Israel while waiting at an aid distribution point, the Israel Defence Forces have denied this, with spokesman Nadav Shoshani telling Salah: 'We found no records of any incidents. In order to take a closer look, we need more details.'
From the vantage point of Lineker et al, Uefa's selective testimony on Al-Obeid is cast as a damning indictment ofindifference to the Palestinians' suffering. But you cannot be taken seriously as a paragon of virtue if your application of morality is so one-sided that you fail to address an Israeli footballer's murder, or even the massacre of Jews that precipitated this entire conflagration. That is not altruism, it is activism.