As the UK Government continues to come under increasing pressure to halt arms sales to Israel amid concerns of a ground offensive in Rafah, Cobbold appeared on the BBC programme and expressed his views Israel's continued bombardment of Gaza.
Cobbold said he was “deeply concerned” what is happening in Gaza with more than 34,000 killed in Israel’s bombardment.
“We should support… the Israeli government in being able to defend themselves” CEO of PureGym Humphrey Cobbold says Palestinian “deserve more protection than they are getting” but to remember Hamas are a “prescribed terrorist organisation”#bbcqt https://t.co/n0ULUcihm8 pic.twitter.com/Y2CrbNnwXK
He further added there should be an “insistence on Israel providing safe harbour and doing everything that can be done and more than they’ve done in the past in order to look after the citizens of Gaza, who are not to blame”.
However, he said we “should not forget the origin and trigger” of the bombardment in reference to the October 7 attacks.
He was then pressed by host Fiona Bruce on whether he believed the UK Government should halt arms sales after Joe Biden said the US will not supply offensive weapons Israel could use to launch an all-out assault on Rafah.
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It followed the US president’s decision to pause a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel last week over concerns the US ally was moving closer to an attack on Rafah despite public and private warnings from his administration.
Cobbold replied: “I’m not aware of which specific weapons the US is stopping. They’ve got a lot more weapons they’re shipping than we are.
“They’ve stopped some big bombs which sounds like a very sensible thing to stop doing. I mean a couple of points on that.
“I certainly think any weapons that are required for defence and for the Iron Dome, I see no reason why we wouldn’t do that.
“We saw horrendous attacks on Israel from Iran that were dealt with partly by British and American forces as well as we saw and I think defensive weapons should still be allowed to go through.
“On the broader question, we send very little in terms of armaments to Israel in reality. It’s the Americans that do that.
“As I stand at the moment, I think we should support in general the Israeli government in being able to defend themselves against… remember Hamas is a prescribed terrorist organisation that has insisted on deciding to eradicate Jews and eradicate Israel and we’ve got to remember that when we deal with this.
“And that’s absolutely not the fault of the Palestinian in general. They deserve more protection than they’re getting I agree with that but we must remember those facts.”
The clip of Cobbold has now gone viral on social media with many now calling for PureGym to be boycotted.
“The CEO still supports arms sales to Israel despite the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinians and genocide,” one user commented as he urged to “boycott PureGym”.
Another user shared an image of their cancelled membership, saying they would not “contribute to the salary of your CEO who cannot condemn the killing of thousands of innocent ”.
A third added: “Anyone that uses @PureGym should really think their membership.”
Several more users said they were planning to cancel their membership over the comments.
PureGym declined to comment when approached by The National.
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