Gary Lineker’s comments were ‘misplaced’ says rabbi

A prominent Jewish rabbi has criticised BBC football pundit Gary Lineker for comparing the Government’s policy on illegal migration to the Nazis, saying his comments were misplaced.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain told GB News: “I think the language that he used was misplaced, because…the Nazis were involved with mass genocide.

“Now, you may just disagree with current government’s policy, but it isn’t mass genocide.”

In an interview with Patrick Christys, he said: “What he’s done is make two mistakes. Firstly, he’s missed the target there because he’s overplayed the criticism and people will say, ‘well, this is a wrong analogy’ and therefore they’ll dismiss his argument.

“And secondly, I think you also demean the unique horror of the Nazis…it sort of brings it down. The Nazis were really quite unique and horrific.

“So he has this right to speak, but I think he chose the wrong analogy and he needs to rethink which analogy he uses next time.”

“Whether I agree with or disagree with him, it’s another matter, but I do think that once he’s outside of the BBC studio, once he’s outside Broadcasting House, he has the right to say what he says, that’s fine by me.

“I think he actually took the wrong analogy and he compared the Conservatives to Nazis, or sort of implied that there was a similarity, which I think is wide of the mark.

“You often hear other people, political commentators or politicians even or just people on social media, accusing the person they don’t like for being like Hitler and it’s almost like a stick beat them.

“But if you constantly use it, and you don’t use it in an extreme circumstances, and that is what Hitler and the Nazis were, extraordinarily extreme, which is why we went to war for six years and engaged in a world war to fight an evil that was beyond anything that we’ve come across before.

“You demean it by constantly using it, then you’re doing a disservice to that terrible period.”