Adidas Apologizes For Featuring Israeli Veteran Who Lost Leg In Hamas Attack

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Adidas apologized Monday after an Israeli campaign featuring Shalev Biton, a former Israel Defense Forces soldier who lost a leg in a 2021 Hamas attack, drew boycott calls from anti-Israel activists.

The German sportswear company said an image used in “a recent local activation by the local team has raised concerns and strong reactions.”

“It was never our intent to cause offense and we apologize for anyone affected,” Adidas said in a statement issued from its global headquarters. “We acknowledge the concerns that have been raised and are taking the feedback seriously.”

Biton was one of about 10 disabled athletes featured on posters in Adidas stores across Israel promoting the company’s Single Shoe service, which allows customers with limb differences to buy one shoe at half the price of a pair rather than purchase a full set. The posters appeared only in Israel and were not part of Adidas’s global campaign, which launched in Europe earlier this year.

Biton lost his left leg on May 12, 2021, while serving in the IDF’s Nahal infantry brigade during Operation Guardian of the Walls. An anti-tank missile fired from Gaza struck the military vehicle he was in on the Israeli side of the border. His fellow soldier, Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, was killed. Biton’s leg later had to be amputated.

He has since learned to walk and run on a prosthetic limb, traveled abroad and proposed to his girlfriend. In 2025, Biton and a friend helped bring Israel’s first youth participant to the European Amputee Football Federation Junior Camp in Romania.

Biton announced the Adidas collaboration on Instagram on Aug. 26, saying that after he returned to running he had been forced to buy full pairs of shoes even though he needed only one.

The Hebrew-language promotional video that circulated online made no mention of his military service or how he lost his leg. Critics nevertheless accused him of taking part in “genocide” and falsely claimed he was wounded in the current Gaza war, which began with the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel. Spanish actor Javier Bardem was among those who amplified calls for a boycott.

In a post Monday, author and commentator Hen Mazzig said Adidas’s apology “says everything.”

“Meet the man Adidas felt the need to apologize for partnering with,” Mazzig wrote, describing Biton’s injury, recovery and advocacy. He noted Adidas’s history as a company founded by Nazi Party members and said it was among the last major brands to cut ties with rapper Kanye West after his antisemitic remarks. Mazzig called the single-shoe program “a long-overdue correction” and said the company “never deserved to work with someone like Shalev.”

Adidas said it would “continue to listen, learn and work to ensure that our actions reflect the inclusive values we stand for,” and noted that the Single Shoe service is expanding across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt.

Biton later removed the promotional video from Instagram. In a separate post, he said the controversy was larger than himself.

“This story is much bigger than me,” he wrote. “It’s about Israel. It’s about our soldiers. It’s about families, friends and an entire country living through a reality that is so often reduced to headlines, clips and narratives from thousands of miles away.”

Adidas did not immediately say whether Biton’s image would be pulled from stores in Israel.