A furore has erupted at Virgin Active’s Old Edwardians gym in Houghton.<\/p>\n
Muhammed Desai, a gym member, was asked to leave the gym after arriving for a session in a t-shirt presenting a political message.<\/p>\n
Desai, the coordinator of pro-Palestine organisation BDS and an ANC Youth League branch president, was wearing a t-shirt calling for “solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli Apartheid”.<\/p>\n
Desai said, “I was told that I am not allowed to wear my YCL BDS t-shirt because it’s pro-Palestinian, and so they’ve called police to arrest me.<\/p>\n
“My point is quite clear. I’m a paid-up member of this club and I have the right to be here.”<\/p>\n
Desai said the manager of the club had refused to put his objections on paper.<\/p>\n
Before being escorted from the gym, Desai said, “Those that are offended at human rights… those are the ones that are a problem.”<\/p>\n
The front of Desai’s t-shirt displays an image of Chris Hani and a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) logo.<\/p>\n
BDS is an international coalition of Palestinian organisations, trade unions, and aligned networks calling for a boycott of all ties with the Israeli state, and for sanctions to be imposed on trade with Israel. <\/p>\n
BDS has recently been active in South Africa in calling for a boycott of Woolworth stores until they remove Israeli products from their shelves.<\/p>\n
More explicitly, the back of Desai’s t-shirt presented the following message: “From the coast of Cape Town to the coast of Gaza in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli apartheid.”<\/p>\n
The Old Edwardian gym has a very large number of Jewish members.<\/p>\n
Twitter users quickly began sharing anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic tweets and pictures<\/a>, becoming the top trending item in the country on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A furore has erupted at Virgin Active’s Old Edwardians gym in Houghton. Muhammed Desai, a gym member, was asked to leave the gym after arriving for a session in a t-shirt presenting a political message. Desai, the coordinator of pro-Palestine organisation BDS and an ANC Youth League branch president, was wearing a t-shirt calling for … Continue reading “Virgin Active throws out pro-Palestinian member”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":20024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[5318,12212,295,726,664,12211],"class_list":["post-20023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-bds","tag-gym","tag-jews","tag-muslims","tag-palestine","tag-virgin-active"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/virginpalestine.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20025,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20023\/revisions\/20025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}