Adidas faces boycott calls over ad 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.

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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.

The World Health Organization estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 people in Gaza have undergone amputations as of early October 2025, when Israel and Hamas signed a “ceasefire” agreement. They are among the 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza who have sustained life-changing injuries during the two-year conflict.

Nearly a year since the ceasefire, conditions remain dire due to Israel’s blockage of humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.

While the advertisement shows the soldier returning to the streets to exercise and run, more than one thousand Palestinian athletes have been killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Hundreds of aspiring footballers have lost their limbs and have formed amputee football teams, finding some respite in sport despite their pain.

These players hold on to football as a means of survival and are trying to reclaim fragments of their former lives despite months of loss, injuries, and widespread destruction.

Spanish actor Javier Bardem was among those calling for a boycott of the sportswear brand. Bardem, who is a vocal pro-Palestine activist, shared several images and videos highlighting the boycott campaign on his social media accounts.

US-Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa, Pakistani author Fatima Bhutto, and Palestinians on social media called for a boycott of Adidas products.

Rights campaigner Westbrook highlighted Israel’s blockade on Gaza, which prevents medicines and prosthetics from entering the Gaza Strip following Israeli destruction of the territory’s medical facilities.

Children account for a quarter of all amputations in Gaza over the past two years, making it the place in the world with the highest number of child amputees per capita, according to the International Rescue Committee.

Westbrook said Israel had “decimated the health sector”, causing a severe lack of care and rehabilitation services.

“Its medieval siege is preventing prosthetics from even entering Gaza, creating this man-made shortage,” she added.

Since the Israeli war on Gaza began in October 2023, reports the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 42,000 Palestinians have suffered life-altering injuries, of which 11,000 are children.