Adidas’s Pro-IDF “Single Shoe” Campaign and the Politics of Selective Empathy

The Gaza amputee crisis is one of many biblical-level “plagues” inflicted on Palestinians throughout occupied Palestine, including Gaza and the West Bank. This crisis—alongside widespread injury, illness, displacement, and hunger—is made worse by restrictions on aid, medical supplies and, specifically for amputees, prosthetics.

Adidas authorized and promoted a single-shoe campaign featuring former IDF soldier Shalev Biton. Let’s be clear about the facts: Biton lost his leg in May 2021 after an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza struck his military vehicle on the Israeli side of the border during Operation Guardian of the Walls.

That does not make Adidas’s choice politically neutral. The context is this: the IPC reported imminent famine and catastrophic food insecurity in Gaza. Amnesty International concluded that Israel imposes a system of apartheid against Palestinians. And a UN commission found that Israeli authorities and security forces committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. That is the context Adidas stepped into.

After running the campaign and resulting public backlash, Adidas apologized for causing offence and described the campaign as a “local activation.”

Interesting.

In university, I wrote an essay for a communications class on the topic of connotation and denotation in advertising.

Denotation: What you were literally shown.
Connotation: What you were communicated by the choice of words, imagery, and placement.

At face value, Adidas literally wants to support amputees by letting them purchase a single shoe rather than a pair.

However, what the campaign connoted was Adidas’s support for IDF soldiers who were maimed in their acts of service. It raises the question: how much of what the IDF does is Adidas willing to support?

Currently, Palestinians are experiencing an extraordinary amputee crisis caused by IDF violence. This is not an unwitting oversight by the people working at Adidas. That’s what they are literally trying to pass off. The truth of the matter is, again, what they connote: selective empathy. Compassion for the soldier, with no comparable recognition of Palestinian civilians injured by the direct and indirect actions of the IDF and the people who serve in it.

Adidas’s program allows eligible amputees to buy the one shoe they need at half the listed price instead of paying for a full pair. Great. Why not direct part of those sales toward Palestinian amputees or medical aid?

Why not fund the development of affordable, dependable prosthetics that can be mass-produced for civilians injured in war?

I dunno. Adidas has multiple ways to keep making money while building some actual corporate social responsibility into the campaign.

Adidas, and any corporation for that matter, communicates through whom it chooses to honour, whose suffering it makes visible, and whose suffering it leaves outside the frame. Adidas may not have explicitly announced its support for the IDF—what critics call the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Forces—but the campaign’s location, its chosen representative, and the response to the backlash all reinforce my argument that this was not an isolated, localized mistake. We need to confront what the campaign truly connoted.

This is not unrelated. Adidas was founded in 1949 by Adolf “Adi” Dassler, who had joined the Nazi Party with his brother Rudolf in 1933 while they ran the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory. That history does not prove the intent behind this campaign, but it shows why corporate choices to accommodate political power deserve scrutiny.

So at this point, we need to boycott Adidas. Nothing Adidas makes is irreplaceable. There are plenty of alternative sportswear companies in the world for us to choose from.

To be more specific, what I am asking is: don’t throw away the shoes, clothes, and equipment you’ve purchased already. You are not supporting ethnic cleansing and famine simply by wearing Adidas-branded items. I bet there are humanitarian aid workers in Palestine right now running around with shoes with three stripes. Let’s be real.

But what you can do now is stop spending another dollar with Adidas. Buy from another sportswear, athleisure, or streetwear company.

Adidas is too big to disappear; it’s not going anywhere. My hope is that, through boycotts and divestment, we can pressure Adidas to abandon the ideology behind campaigns like this and empower people who will use the company’s staying power to move in a progressive, pro-humanity direction.

Adidas’s Pro-IDF “Single Shoe” Campaign and the Politics of Selective Empathy

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