Adidas faces boycott calls over campaign featuring former Israeli soldier

Adidas is facing a wave of criticism and online boycott calls after featuring a former Israeli soldier in an advertisement for its single-shoe service for people with disabilities. The campaign shows Shalev Biton trying on a shoe at an Adidas store in Israel before running outdoors.

Biton lost his leg after being wounded during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, when Israeli forces bombarded the isolated enclave in an 11-day assault. For Palestinian rights activists, that background makes the campaign deeply offensive rather than simply insensitive.

“This is not just a matter of Adidas being unaware or insensitive; it is an absolute insult to Palestinians who lost loved ones killed by Israel, as well as those who lost limbs as a result of Israeli attacks,” Stephanie Westbrook, coordinator of the sports boycott campaign for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, told Al Jazeera. PACBI is a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

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This is not just a matter of Adidas being unaware or insensitive; it is an absolute insult to Palestinians who lost loved ones killed by Israel, as well as those who lost limbs as a result of Israeli attacks.

Westbrook said the campaign risked “normalizing Israel’s crimes against Palestinians and allowing that country to continue doing so with impunity.” She also criticized the decision to center the advertisement on a soldier whose identity, in the campaign, is tied to his military service and the loss of his leg during repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza. Westbrook described Israel as carrying out genocide, maintaining an illegal military occupation in Palestinian territory and enforcing decades of apartheid against Palestinians.

The article cites World Health Organization estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 people in Gaza had undergone amputations by early October 2025, when Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Around 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza had suffered permanent injuries during the two-year conflict, according to the same passage. Nearly a year after the ceasefire, the article says conditions remained dire because of Israel’s continuing blockade of humanitarian aid. More than 1,000 Palestinian athletes were killed during the war, while hundreds of young Palestinian footballers lost limbs and formed an amputee football team as a way to survive and reclaim parts of their former lives.

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normalizing Israel’s crimes against Palestinians and allowing that country to continue doing so with impunity