This Is Why the Adidas-IDF Ad Is Deemed Cruel and Is Sparking a Boycott
GAZA — Sportswear giant Adidas is facing widespread criticism and boycott calls after featuring a former Israeli soldier in one of its advertisements. The soldier appeared in a campaign promoting its service selling single shoes for amputees with disabilities.
The Adidas advert, which promotes an in-store service and shows former Israeli soldier Shalev Biton trying on shoes at a shop in Israel before wearing them whilst running outdoors, was described as “an insult to the Palestinian people” by a boycott campaign coordinator on Sunday.
Biton lost his leg after being wounded during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, when the Israeli military repeatedly attacked the besieged enclave in an 11-day military operation.
Human rights campaigners and pro-Palestinian activists said the spontaneous outrage and online boycott campaign directed at Adidas should come as no surprise to the German sportswear and apparel company.
“This is not merely a matter of Adidas being insensitive or lacking empathy; it is a real insult to the Palestinian people who have lost their loved ones to Israeli killings, and to those who have lost limbs [as a result of Israeli attacks],” Stephanie Westbrook, sports boycott campaign coordinator for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) — a founding organisation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — told Al Jazeera.
Westbrook highlighted the dangers of such campaigns, which she said would “normalise Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and allow it to continue committing those crimes without accountability”.
“Here we have an Adidas campaign featuring an Israeli soldier — whose core identity is bound up with his status as a soldier — who lost his leg whilst taking part in one of Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza, and who served in the military of a state that is currently carrying out a genocide, maintaining an illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, and enforcing a system of apartheid against the Palestinian people for decades,” she said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) 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. They are among 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza who suffered life-changing injuries during the two-year conflict.
Almost a year on from the ceasefire, conditions remain dire due to the Israeli blockade preventing humanitarian aid from entering the enclave.
Whilst the advertisement shows a soldier returning to sport and running through the streets, more than a thousand Palestinian athletes have been killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Hundreds of aspiring footballers have lost limbs and formed dedicated disability football teams (amputee football), finding small consolation in sport amidst their suffering.
These players have made football a means of survival and an attempt to piece back together their former lives, despite having endured immense loss, injury and widespread destruction.