Adidas has issued an apology after its Israel-based campaign featuring disabled athletes — including a former IDF soldier who lost his leg in a 2021 anti-tank missile attack — drew a pro-Palestinian boycott campaign built on false claims that the veteran had participated in the Gaza conflict, leaving the company to choose between standing by an amputee athlete and capitulating to social media pressure. It chose to capitulate.
The campaign, limited to Adidas retail outlets in Israel, was a quiet and genuinely inclusive initiative: the company was promoting its single shoe service — a program offering individual shoes for athletes who require only one due to amputation or accidents — and featured ten disabled athletes in posters and videos. The Hebrew-language content did not mention Shalev Biton's military service or the circumstances under which he lost his leg. It was an ad about an amputee who runs with a prosthetic limb. Pro-Palestinian accounts on social media — including some of the largest such accounts in the world, with millions of followers — identified Biton as an IDF veteran, falsely claimed he had participated in the recent Gaza conflict, and launched a coordinated campaign calling his inclusion in the ad an endorsement of what they characterized as genocide. In reality, Biton lost his leg in May 2021, when an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza struck the Israeli military vehicle he was traveling in on the Israeli side of the border. A fellow soldier, Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, was killed in the same attack.
"Been hit by an absolutely insane wave of hatred and reports from all over the world. Some of the biggest pro-Palestinian pages in the world, with millions of followers and millions of likes and shares, have been posting about me again and again, and the abuse and reports just don't stop." — Shalev Biton, Instagram
Adidas' statement acknowledged that an image used in "a recent local activation by the local team has raised concerns and strong reactions" and offered an apology to "anyone affected." The company said it was "taking the feedback seriously" and would "continue to listen, learn and work to ensure that our actions reflect the inclusive values we stand for." The irony of invoking inclusive values while apologizing for featuring a disabled athlete is apparently not something Adidas's communications team paused to consider. The apology is not directed at anyone who was actually harmed — Biton was not harmed by the ad. It is directed at the online mob that organized against him using demonstrably false information about when and where he lost his leg.
The episode follows a by-now-familiar pattern: a large corporation features someone with a connection to Israel or the Israeli military, a coordinated social media campaign built on false or misleading premises generates sufficient noise, and the corporation apologizes not for anything it actually did wrong but for the existence of the controversy itself. Biton, who returned to running on a prosthetic limb after his injury, is left with an "insane wave of hatred" from accounts that branded him a war criminal for the act of appearing in a shoe advertisement.
Adidas has faced significant controversy in recent years over its approach to political and social issues, including the fallout from its split with Kanye West over antisemitic statements. The company has operated in the Middle East for decades and has historically maintained business relationships across the region. Its single shoe service — the program that prompted the Israel campaign — was launched to allow athletes with a single limb to purchase one shoe rather than a pair, reducing cost barriers to participation in sport.
Shalev Biton lost his leg because an anti-tank missile hit his vehicle on Israeli soil in 2021. He rebuilt himself, returned to running, and became the kind of athlete a sportswear company should be proud to feature. Adidas featured him and then apologized for it because a social media mob operating on false information demanded it. The inclusive values Adidas says it stands for should include not throwing a disabled veteran under the bus to appease people who spread lies about him.