Since January, Adidas has offered a service called Single Shoe that allows for the purchase of a single shoe for half the price of the pair. It operates in twenty-three European countries and was designed in consultation with disability organisations. It is a sound idea, although it arrives late: until now, anyone who required one shoe paid for two.
At the end of August, the brand's Israeli subsidiary promoted this service in Israel. The protagonist of the video, in Hebrew, was Shalev Biton, a former soldier of the 931st Battalion of the Nahal Brigade who lost his left leg in 2021 when a missile fired from Gaza struck his military vehicle. In the advertisement, he entered a shop, purchased a shoe and went for a run; posters were displayed in Israeli establishments.
While that advertisement was being filmed, the World Health Organization estimated that more than five thousand limb amputations had been performed in Gaza since October 2023. One in five amputees is a child.
An image chooses
An advertisement does not show: it selects. And by selecting, it decides what is visible and what does not exist for the viewer.
What it chose to show was a mutilated body returning to run. It is the narrative of overcoming, proven and profitable in sport for decades: the obstacle conquered by individual will. For the image to function, it requires the damage to appear without origin, as a misfortune fallen from the sky upon which personal merit is built. That is why the video does not state how the amputation occurred. It could not state it: naming the cause would have destroyed the narrative.
That omission is not a script oversight; it is the central operation of the piece, and also what transforms it into something greater.
From advertising to propaganda
A brand that sells shoes engages in advertising. A brand that, in the middle of a war that has amputated thousands of people on one side, chooses to represent amputation using a soldier from the army waging that war, engages in something else: it establishes who occupies the place of the legitimate damaged body.
That is the mechanism, and it must be observed slowly because it is what distinguishes this case from an unfortunate campaign. Within the frame enters an Israeli amputee with a name, a history and a prosthesis, illuminated, running, victorious. Outside the frame remain five thousand Palestinian amputees without names; of the two thousand three hundred who were evaluated, only five hundred had permanent prostheses. The image does not deny them: it does something more effective, which is to not require them. It leaves them in the place where there is no narrative, no brand, and no camera.
When a representation distributes visibility in this manner during an open conflict, it is no longer selling a product: it is proposing a version of the world in which the suffering of one side has a face and that of the other is statistics. That has a technical name and it is not advertising.
The company will claim that it did not intend this. It is irrelevant: an image does not produce what its author intended, but rather what it does when it circulates; and this one does exactly that: it normalises. It presents as natural that the body of the soldier is the body that deserves to be seen.
The response entered
The response was a scattered reaction on social media without organisation or a list of signatories: illustrations, digital posters and videos made by different accounts and amplified by writers, journalists and public figures, among them Javier Bardem, who shared several of those materials on his stories.
And those pieces did not argue against the advertisement. They did something more effective: they spoke its language. They took the logo, the typography, the framing of the single shoe, the entire visual grammar of the brand and applied it to amputated Palestinian bodies. Same format, same design, another body inside.
Therein lies the technical lesson of the episode. A text that criticises an image remains outside of it, discussing it in another register; the image survives intact. A counter-advertisement that reproduces its form enters inside and forces it to compete with itself. Anyone who has seen the brand's poster recognises the second as its twin; in that recognition, the question that the first had suppressed is imposed: why this body and not that one.
It was not necessary to accuse anyone. It sufficed to place alongside it what the advertising selection had left out. The comparison does all the work, because the original frame only held up as long as no one showed its reverse.
Afterwards
On 7 September, Adidas apologised. It stated that an image used in a local activation by the local team had raised concerns and strong reactions, that it was never its intention to offend and that it took the criticism seriously. It insisted that it was a local action, not the global campaign, and that the service was being extended throughout the Middle East, including Palestine.
PACBI, an organisation forming part of the boycott movement, responded that the apology was insufficient and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the former soldier from all brand materials and channels. As far as is publicly known, Adidas apologised but has not confirmed any withdrawal.
The framing
All of this is occurring while international institutions have spent months issuing statements regarding the genocide in Gaza, and while the death toll, including thousands of children, continues to rise. That is the backdrop against which a brand decided which amputated body deserved a campaign.
A commercial image does not describe the world: it crops a fragment and presents it as if it were the entire frame available. When the chosen fragment is a body broken by war, that cropping ceases to be a marketing decision. Deciding which harm is seen and which is left out is to decide whose pain counts.
Five thousand people without a leg. One in five, a child. And a prosthesis for less than a quarter of those who were eventually examined.
That was also in the shot. Only off-camera.
On the open conversation
This text is based on a verified case: the local promotion that the Israeli subsidiary of Adidas carried out at the end of August 2026 for its Single Shoe service, featuring an amputee former soldier; the counter-advertising that followed; and the company's apology on 7 September. I maintain that in this context, the operation ceases to function as advertising and functions as propaganda: by suppressing the cause of the harm and choosing which mutilated body is visible, the image distributes legitimacy in an open conflict. The figures are taken from the World Health Organization's May 2026 update. If anyone wishes to intervene from the fields of design, communication or visual studies, this notebook remains open.
Sources
Adidas, corporate statement regarding the Single Shoe service (11 March 2026): available since 19 January 2026 in twenty-three European countries, one shoe at 50% of the price of the pair, developed in consultation with organisations for people with disabilities.
The Israeli activation: the collaboration was made public on 26 August 2026; information from Ynet (4 September), The Times of Israel (7 September), Jewish Telegraphic Agency and The Jerusalem Post (8 September). Sources disagree between ten and eleven participants with disabilities.
Regarding the circumstances of the injury (12 May 2021, Operation 'Guardian of the Walls'; vehicle located on the Israeli side of the border): The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post; JTA citing Channel 12. There is no public information attributing individual criminal responsibility to the participant.
World Health Organization, Estimating Trauma Rehabilitation Needs in Gaza: May 2026 Update, released on 12 May 2026 (data on injured persons as of 1 April 2026): more than 5,000 estimated amputations since October 2023; one in five amputees is a minor; more than 22,000 serious limb injuries; 43,011 people with potentially life-changing injuries; of 2,300 amputees evaluated between September 2024 and May 2026, 500 had received a permanent prosthesis.
The response was decentralised, without an organised campaign or a formal list of participants. Materials attributed to Vincenzo Fullone, Gina N. K. and Sara Haddad, amplified in Instagram stories by Javier Bardem according to screenshots reproduced by various media outlets.
Apology from Adidas released on 7 September 2026 by its regional account: 'an image used in a recent local activation by the local team has raised concerns and strong reactions'. PACBI deemed it insufficient and demanded the withdrawal of the material. There is no confirmation of such withdrawal.