Adidas' new campaign with Bella Hadid shouldn't be forgiven

Imagine, for a moment, being an Olympic athlete from Israel.

Imagine living your whole life knowing that the dream you train every day to achieve is inexorably linked to one of the most traumatic events in your country’s history when 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team lost their lives during a terror attack at the 1972 Munich Games.

Imagine trying to prepare for an Olympics while grief and chaos has gripped your country for the past nine months since Hamas terrorists breached the border with Gaza and killed approximately 1,200 Israelis while taking 250 hostages in the surprise attack last Oct. 7.

Imagine watching so many people around the world turn against your country for responding to an existential threat with forceful military action.

And then imagine preparing to go to France, a country rife with antisemitism against the 500,000 or so Jews still remaining in the country, and knowing that any success you might have will be viewed as controversial because of your government’s excesses and the terrible humanitarian toll of the war it is waging in Gaza. In some circles, their mere presence at the world’s biggest sporting event will make them pariahs — and potentially targets.

Israeli athletes at the Paris Games are going to have it hard enough. They don't need one of the most iconic brands in sports joining the antisemitism pile-on.

What Adidas did this week in launching its SL 72 sneaker — and putting a famous anti-Israel propagandist at the front of its marketing campaign — is an outrage.

It was also a choice, and one that neither Israelis nor Jews around the world should ever forgive.

Mistakes happen in marketing, even in large conglomerates with layers of public relations experts. But this kind of corporate provocation is so bizarre and so obviously inappropriate that the logical conclusion to be drawn is that Adidas wanted to make some kind of sick, twisted statement that flies in the face of everything the Olympics are supposed to represent.

First of all, Adidas relaunching the original SL 72 sneaker, which debuted at the 1972 Olympics, is not something that should have happened in the first place.

Yes, the Munich Games were a significant moment for the German company because that’s where it launched the trefoil logo that became associated with Adidas until the 1990s when it rebranded with three stripes.

But for the rest of the world, the 1972 Olympics are mostly associated with one thing: The massacre that took place when eight Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic village, killed two victims and took nine hostages, who were all killed during a failed rescue attempt.

It’s by far the worst moment in the history of the Olympics. More than five decades later, it remains an outrage.

Adidas may be a German company that is proud of its Olympic heritage, but the 1972 Games do not need to be commemorated with a retro marketing campaign linking Munich to Paris. They shouldn't be commoditized for Adidas’ profits. They should be remembered as the historic security failure that they were and a horrible but necessary reminder that the dangers faced by Israelis do not necessarily end at their borders.

Second, it’s completely outrageous that Adidas chose model Bella Hadid to be the face of their advertisements for the shoe. Hadid, 27, is an American whose father, Mohamed, was born in Nazareth but whose family fled to Syria during the war that immediately followed Israel’s statehood.

That history informs Hadid’s pro-Palestinian views and her anger at the current situation in Gaza, which is both understandable and her right. But social media posts to her 61 million Instagram followers have also been filled with anti-Israel invective, false claims and antisemitic tropes. Last year, Bella's sister Gigi Hadid − also a model and social media influencer − was named one of three finalists for the Antisemite of the Year “award" by the StopAntisemitism watchdog group.

In other words, choosing someone who is famous on social media for being anti-Israel, at a time when much of the world is simmering in antisemitism and anti-Israel hate, to represent an ad campaign that reminds many people of the time when 11 Israelis were killed by terrorists at the Olympics … well, it just doesn’t really seem like a coincidence.

Oh, and by the way, Adidas was founded by Adolf Dassler − who joined the Nazi party in 1933 when Hitler rose to power. The modern-day company ended its association with Kanye West in 2022 after he made a raft of antisemitic comments, saying “Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech.”

Given the issues with West and Adidas’ understanding that its historic Nazi associations would put the company under an even greater antisemitic microscope, you'd think its executives would be hyper-sensitive to any associations that could be construed as antisemitic.

But, at least in this case, you'd be wrong.

Adidas’ statement to media outlets acknowledged “that connections have been made to tragic historical events − though these are completely unintentional − and we apologize for any upset or distress caused." The company promised to adjust the campaign moving forward.

As we head into an Olympics where the vulnerability of Israeli athletes is going to be impossible to ignore given the context of world events and France’s unfortunate reality as a cauldron of antisemitism, the better move would be to drop it entirely.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Adidas' new campaign with Bella Hadid shouldn't be forgiven