Adidas has dropped vocal pro-Palestinian supermodel Bella Hadid from an advertising campaign that drew criticism from Israel over its reference to the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The campaign was for the retro SL72 shoe, inspired by a design from the 1972 event, where the Palestinian Black September group took Israeli athletes hostage.
Eleven Israelis, a German policeman and five Palestinian attackers died after a standoff at the Olympic village and the nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield as rescue efforts erupted into a gunfight.
The German sports brand said on Friday that it would be “revising the remainder of the campaign” with immediate effect.
“We are conscious that connections have been made to tragic historical events – though these are completely unintentional – and we apologise for any upset or distress caused,” the company said in a statement sent to the news agency AFP.
Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, has repeatedly made public remarks criticising the Israeli government and supporting Palestinians over the years.
On October 23, she posted a statement on Instagram lamenting the loss of lives in Gaza while calling on followers to pressure their leaders to protect civilians in the Palestinian enclave.
Hadid has taken part in several pro-Palestinian demonstrations during the war and has described Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 38,848 Palestinians, as a “genocide”.
In 2020, Instagram was forced to apologise to Hadid after she criticised the social media platform for removing a post she shared that showed a picture of her father’s passport with his birthplace listed as Palestine.
In August, the model criticised Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, after he said the right to life and movement for settlers in the occupied West Bank trumped the right to movement for Palestinians.
“In no place, no time, especially in 2023, should one life be more valuable than another’s. Especially simply because of their ethnicity, culture or pure hatred,” she wrote in a post on Instagram.
Israeli officials express outrage
A spokeswoman from Adidas confirmed that Hadid had been removed from the campaign, which notes that the shoes were first introduced in 1972 but never mentions the attack on the Israeli athletes.
The Israeli embassy in Germany criticised the choice of Hadid for the campaign.
“Guess who the face of the campaign is? Bella Hadid, a model with Palestinian roots who has spread anti-Semitism in the past and incited violence against Israelis and Jews,” the Israeli embassy in Germany wrote on X on Thursday.
“How can Adidas now claim that the reference [to the events in Munich] was ‘completely unintentional’?” Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, said in response to the company’s climbdown.
“The terror of 1972 is etched into the collective memory of Germans and Israelis,” he told Die Welt TV on Friday.
A flood of social media posts, meanwhile, expressed support for Hadid, criticised Adidas for axing the model and called for a boycott of the company.
Adidas said it would continue the SL72 campaign with other famous faces, including footballer Jules Kounde, singer Melissa Bon and model Sabrina Lan.
