The key event in Gary Lineker’s week should have been presenting Saturday’s FA Cup final on the BBC, a week before he hosts Match of the Day for the last time. Instead he has found himself fighting for his reputation and career after sharing a pro-Palestine post on his Instagram account that featured a rat emoji historically used as an anti-Semitic slur.

The backlash was swift; the Board of Deputies of British Jews called for him to be sacked rather than leave on his own terms, there was uproar among Jewish staff at the BBC and Lineker himself offered an unprecedented and unreserved apology after claiming ignorance over the symbol’s meaning.

When I met Lineker last Friday such a furore may have seemed unlikely but not impossible – after all, in the past few months he has reposted increasingly incendiary verdicts on the Israel-Hamas war.

What Lineker has not done, until now, is explain why he acts as he does, making public comments on Gaza when many would argue he is ill-informed. This is his reason.

“We’re seeing it live-streamed into our own phones – I’ve never seen that before,” he says when we meet at the Football Business Awards (where he collected an award for outstanding contribution to the game) three days before reposting the video featuring the rat emoji.

“It’s beyond depraved, what they’re going through, unimaginable. I’ve got kids. They’re grown-up now, but every day people are losing their children, their brothers and sisters. I don’t know how the world thinks this is OK. We still seem to be on the side of the people who are doing this. We’re still supplying arms. And you think, ‘Wow, how?’ The vast majority of people see it for what it is now. Unfortunately, the Government’s not doing much about it. It comes down to power and money. But what we’re allowing to happen is beyond the pale.”