Adidas faces boycott calls over campaign featuring former Israeli soldier

Adidas faces boycott calls over campaign featuring former Israeli soldier

Sportswear giant Adidas has faced criticism and calls for a boycott for featuring a former Israeli army soldier in an advertising campaign for the company’s single-shoe service for amputees.

The Adidas advertisement promoting its in-store service, which shows former Israeli soldier Shalev Biton trying on a shoe at a store in Israel and then wearing it while running outdoors, was termed “an affront to Palestinians” by a boycott campaigns coordinator on Sunday.

Biton lost his leg after being wounded during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, during which the Israeli army attacked the besieged enclave repeatedly in an 11-day assault.

Human rights campaigners and pro-Palestine activists say the immediate outrage and online boycott campaign targeted at Adidas should not come as a surprise to the German athletic apparel and footwear company.

“This isn’t Adidas being tone-deaf or insensitive; it is an absolute affront to the Palestinians who have lost their loved ones, killed by Israel, and who have lost their limbs [to Israeli attacks],” Stephanie Westbrook, a sports boycott campaigns coordinator for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) – a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement – told Al Jazeera.

Westbrook underlined the danger of such campaigns, which she believes would “normalise Israel’s crimes against Palestinians and allow it to continue to commit them with impunity”.

“Here we have an Adidas campaign featuring an Israeli soldier, whose whole identity is centred around his being a soldier, who lost his leg while participating in one of the repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza, serving in an army of a state that is currently committing genocide, has carried out an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territory, and that has been imposing a decades-long apartheid rule over Palestinians,” she said.