In his latest bout of theatrics, BDS’s Muhammed Desai positions himself as a victim of racist and Islamophobic bullying whose right to freedom of expression has been infringed. This follows his removal from a Virgin Active Gym for wearing a t-shirt calling for a boycott of Israel. There can be only one sensible response to this, and that is, “Ag, shame!”
Desai entered the gym in the full knowledge that its rules prohibit members from wearing clothing bearing provocative political slogans. He knew very well, in other words, what the result would be when he decided to overtly flout this regulation. That is why he made sure the media, in anticipation of a nice juicy confrontation, would be on the scene. Desai got what he wanted, of course. His stunt resulted in widespread coverage throughout the print, electronic and online media.
No-one who has over the years followed the antics of Desai and BDS-SA, the rabidly anti-Israel organisation of which he is national coordinator, will be at all surprised by this. It has long been the modus operandi of BDS activists to first provoke an ugly confrontation and then run to the media posing as victims.
Please do not misunderstand me, I am a staunch proponent of freedom of speech. However, that is not what the Virgin Gym incident was about. Rather, it was just another opportunity for grandstanding and publicity seeking on the part of one of Joburg’s great political theatre impresarios, Muhammed Desai.
Hearing that there was tension within the Old Eds gym off Desai trotted with a journalist in tow, ready to launch into his later media stunt. He would have us believe that Etv journalist Yusuf Omar was coincidentally gymming at exactly the time Desai arrived for his `workout’ that night. “I didn’t enter the gym with a journalist. It was just coincidental he was there”, he claimed in a Radio 702 interview. Gee, how very convenient. I think it can be taken as a given that journalists do not lurk in the passages of local gyms in the hope that something worth reporting on will just crop up.
I was wondering where BDS’s commitment to freedom of expression came into the picture when they disrupted a piano concert at Wits University in 2013, when they prevented Palestinian Human Rights Activist Bassem Eid from speaking at the University of Johannesburg earlier this year, and when they threatened to `shut down Sandton’ and ensure `no proud Zionist would be allowed to have a concert on our soil’. I also wondered why, if its commitment to freedom of expression is so strong, it resorted to threats, intimidation, smear campaigns and even attempted bribery to prevent a group of South African students to visit Israel in order to broaden their knowledge of the situation there.
It would appear, in other words, that Desai feels that the Bill of Rights in our country’s constitution applies only to himself and to those who think like him.
Last year Desai applied his theatrical skills to develop a pseudo Woolworths shareholder meeting in Cape Town. A week before the real shareholders’ AGM, BDS members bought shares in the company and orchestrated a parallel event masquerading as the real deal.
Duping many journalists into believing this was a legitimate business briefing, Desai et al provided their version of the Woolworths financials, presenting a narrative constructed to show how brilliantly effective their boycott had been on the company’s bottom line. They even supported their contentions with a document prepared by a Wits sociology honors graduate supporting their claims. Unfortunately for them, when the real financial indicators came out, they showed excellent results for Woolworths, with group sales for the past financial year showing an increase of more than 12%.
Fortunately there are savvy journalists who can see through these theatrics. Daily Vox Executive Editor Azad Essa commented in the Daily Maverick 14 August, “But as it stands now, the organised South African chapter of the global BDS movement is little more than a joke”. He goes on to say that, “The BDS campaign against Woolworths is little more than a shouting match that absolves the prickly conscience of their supporters.
This disconnect of BDS-SA from a project of radical love for the Palestinians, or indeed all marginalised people, is especially evident by its figurehead Desai being kicked out of an upper-middle-class gym for wearing a T-shirt. He didn’t get kicked off a Jews-only bus. He wasn’t asked to get off a whites-only bench. He was wearing a T-shirt in an expensive gym where many ordinary South Africans are excluded anyway.”
In good theatre tradition, part of the performance is the merchandising outside. And true to tradition hours after Desai donned his impressively branded gym apparel into Old Eds, BDS tweeted photos of their model (front and back images) wearing their new range of clothing, “Thank you to all comrades and friends that have reached and are asking where they can get the BDS T-shirts. We have the gym Tshirts available in the office for R100.” They then provide ordering details for the BDS shop.
As this latest piece of attention-seeking and media manipulation by BDS and its publicity-hungry national coordinator runs its course, we can only what the next instalment will be in this tiresome and fraudulent propaganda circus.
