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‘The gun is on the table’: Both sides of Israel’s debate say that a constitutional crisis is coming
(JTA) — In a country that is deeply divided, where attending anti-government protests has become a weekly ritual for many, at least one idea still unites the right and left: Israel appears to be hurtling toward a constitutional crisis.
The crisis — which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed a “governmental breakdown” during a recent visit to Germany — would flow from legislation Netanyahu is pushing that would overhaul Israel’s judiciary. The proposal — which critics say threatens Israel’s democratic character — would increase the coalition’s control over the appointment of Supreme Court judges, and would enable Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to override court decisions with a simple majority.
A constitutional crisis occurs when a country faces an unsolvable dispute between competing branches of government. Countries have recovered from constitutional crises in the past — the United States has had several over the centuries, including multiple ones related to the leadup to the Civil War and its aftermath — but the process can be difficult, and mistrust long-lasting.
In Israel’s case, what happens if the Knesset passes the judicial legislation, the Supreme Court strikes it down, and the Knesset doesn’t abide by that decision? Does the court or Knesset hold final authority?
However that question is answered, just getting to that point would represent a dramatic breakdown in a 75-year-old democracy. “The very idea that the government might not comply, might ignore the Supreme Court’s decision, would be an unprecedented crisis,” said Michal Saliternik, a law professor at Netanya Academic College.
In that dangerous moment, some Israelis see opportunity. In a perhaps ironic twist, Israel is on the precipice of a constitutional crisis but doesn’t actually have a constitution. It’s a risky bet, but a battle between the court and the coalition, said international law scholar Tamar Megiddo, might just force Israel into the long and arduous process of writing a governing document and figuring out how to balance the country’s competing authorities.
“The entire constitutional system here is held together by duct tape,” said Megiddo, who teaches at the College of Law and Business outside Tel Aviv. “It’s ridiculous. We have no protection of our constitutional regime, no protection of our separation of powers, no protection of checks and balances and no protection of human rights. The only reason this functioned for the past 75 years is because there was good faith.”
She added, “I think a lot of people view the current constitutional moment, or the realistically likely constitutional crisis, as also an opportunity for fixing everything that’s broken in the system.”
When asked how a clash between the government and courts could come to a head, those scholars and others all individually sketched out versions of the same scenario: The government passes a law giving itself control over judicial appointments, the court strikes down the law — and the government appoints new judges anyway. When those judges arrive for their first day of work, should the security guards let them in? Who should the guards obey — the government that appointed the judges, or the courts that declared their appointment illegal?
While that question is being debated, the courts may not be able to hear cases at all.
“At the end of the day, the state needs to function,” Saliternik said. “The courts have work to do. If the judges can’t enter their chambers, it will definitely impact everyone. It’ll be like a third world country in which institutions don’t function.”
The law on judicial appointments may be passed next week, and for rank-and-file Israelis, both Saliternik and Megiddo said, this question would hardly be theoretical. If Israel’s system of government descends into crisis, it could lead to a downgrade in the country’s credit rating and an economic downturn that ordinary citizens feel in their pockets. And given how invested Israelis have become in the face of the judicial reform — protesting in the streets by the hundreds of thousands — it’s unlikely they’ll ignore what ensues if and when it passes. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has a reputation for congeniality, gave a pained speech last week warning of the potential for civil war.
“If the court issues a ruling and the government does not comply, then the Israeli public will say, ‘This is the ultimate proof that this is not a democracy anymore,’” Saliternik said. “I say this with trepidation, but if there’s an open battle between the Supreme Court and the Knesset, it could result in street violence.”
Megiddo said that even the possibility of such a crisis has normalized tactics that were once on the fringe, such as refusal to perform military service, a duty seen as sacrosanct across much of Jewish Israeli society. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly warned that the possibility of mass refusal to serve could cause him to leave his post. On Tuesday, a group of military reservists said they plan to recruit tens of thousands more who will pledge to shirk reserve duty if the legislation goes through.
“People who refuse service were considered, in the Israeli public, to be a very extreme minority, and now it’s mainstream to say that people won’t serve the military for a dictatorship,” Megiddo said. “It’s unbelievable how mainstream saying that at the moment is, and that has long-term impact.”
Both supporters and opponents of the legislation in the Knesset are treating a constitutional crisis as a real possibility. The only thing they disagree about is who will be to blame — and both sides appear to be raising the stakes, vowing either to disobey government decisions, or disregard the court.
“The security situation is troubling,” said former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, an opponent of Netanyahu, in a speech last week referencing escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and urging Netanyahu to pause the court legislation. “Don’t drag us into an irresponsible constitutional crisis during a security crisis.”
Netanyahu’s allies, unsurprisingly, say it is the opponents of the reform — and the justices of the court themselves — who would be responsible for a constitutional crisis, should the court strike down the law.
Striking down the reform legislation would be a “doomsday weapon,” wrote Dror Eydar, a columnist for the pro-Netanyahu tabloid Israel Hayom, in a piece titled “Inviting a constitutional crisis.” “This striking down would constitute a coup d’etat.”
(Another column four days later in the same publication, however, urged a compromise on the judicial reform in order to avert a constitutional crisis. That piece was written by Miriam Adelson, whose husband Sheldon — the late billionaire philanthropist — founded and funded the paper.)
Netanyahu’s coalition members are still worried enough about the prospect of a constitutional crisis that they’ve agreed to what they refer to as a “softening” of one piece of the legislation. Instead of giving the coalition total control over Supreme Court appointments, the new text of the bill would let the coalition control its first two judicial appointments.
“There’s no doubt that the change we made prevents any real claim that can create a constitutional crisis,” said Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who is spearheading the legislation, on an Israeli news show on Monday.
A view of the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. (Eddie Gerald via Getty Images)
But then he threw down the gauntlet: If the court still overturns the law, Levin said, “That would cross every red line. We definitely wouldn’t accept it.”
Responding to that claim, Yair Lapid, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, said that if the government disobeys the court, citizens should disobey the government.
“That’s it, the masks are off. The gun is on the table,” Lapid tweeted. “The real prime minister, Yariv Levin, is drawing us into total chaos and a constitutional crisis we won’t be able to come back from. If the justice minister is calling on the government not to obey the law, why should the citizens of Israel obey the government?”
Another Likud lawmaker, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, said he would respect the court’s ruling if it struck the law down. But in any case, the Likud bill doesn’t appear to be a promising avenue toward compromise. “This isn’t softening and compromise, this is Hungary and Poland on steroids,” Labor Party Chair Merav Michaeli said on a radio program on Monday, referring to countries where the government has increased its control over the court system. “From the start, I said we can’t negotiate with them.”
A predecessor of Michaeli’s in the Labor Party has also taken a hard line and — unlike the many voices who worry about a clash of government authorities — has suggested that he would prefer a constitutional crisis to compromise. Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, said that a constitutional crisis would force senior Israeli military commanders to take sides — and expressed confidence that they would choose to obey the courts.
“It would be a severe constitutional crisis,” Barak said in a speech last month. “That’s when the test of the gatekeepers and defenders of sovereignty would arrive: The head of the Shin Bet, the police commissioner, the chief of staff and the head of the Mossad. I’m convinced that they understand that in a democracy, the only choice is to recognize the supremacy of law and the Supreme Court.”
The mounting threats by military reservists, and comments by former military commanders opposing the court reform, may indicate that the military will opt to follow the court. But Saliternik hopes that’s a choice Israeli forces won’t have to confront.
“This is something that has never happened in Israel,” she said. “It’s so very hard to think about. I very much hope that that government will get a hold of itself and act responsibly.”
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The post ‘The gun is on the table’: Both sides of Israel’s debate say that a constitutional crisis is coming appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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They traveled to the U.S. as Jewish teens. Here’s how these 4 Israelis see America now.
As the U.S. celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, some past participants in the Bronfman Fellowship, which for three decades has brought a cohort of 17-year-old Israelis to the United States for two weeks each summer, looked back on how their visits — and what they learned about the American experiment — shaped their lives. Here are their stories as told to Talya Zax and Sage Lattman, edited and condensed for clarity.
Oz Bin Nun
Oz is a combat veteran of the Egoz Unit, a former Jewish Agency emissary and co-founder of the “Reserve Duty Servants Forum,” leading strategic advocacy for reservists’ rights.
My first time in the U.S. was through Bronfman, and the most honest way to describe it was life changing. I grew up in a very, very Israeli family — all of my grandparents were born in Israel, which is pretty rare, and my parents don’t really speak English, which is not very common in Israel. I didn’t think I’d be in the U.S. in the future even, so Bronfman for me was the first time that I found myself there.
I’m trying to find the U.S. that I met during my Bronfman journey, but I’m not sure it really exists.
Back then I thought the U.S. was a magical place, but it was also the whole Bronfman idea: you’re driving around, you have the best speakers, you speak with the most interesting people, in a very open-minded, curious and friendly way — more than friends, kind of like allies to your journey. All that framework created a pretty magical experience, and when I got back to Israel I was like, ‘Wow, it really changed something inside me.’ But I came back in 2016, which was also the rise of Trump and a lot of things that I didn’t see in 2015, and I guess a lot of Americans didn’t see as well.
When I think about the U.S., the first thing is some specific smell that Americans aren’t really aware of — something wet in the air, and a lot of things are very green. And almost immediately after that is the sense of room. There is enough room. When you’re going there, you don’t feel that someone else is taking your place, or stepping on your toes. In Israel there is a sense that there is no room; everything is so crowded, and not just physically. There is something about just driving until the horizon — it’s a sense of awe and a sense of freedom.
My wife and I lived for two years in Madison, Wisconsin, not in the classic places, not on the coasts, and to some extent we saw the real America — the beautiful things in it and the problematic things in it. Once you’re driving through America, America makes much more sense. You drive for six or eight or 10 hours and around Southern Illinois, St. Louis, Arkansas you see the signs flip, and the best coffee in Mobile, Alabama has a pride flag. I feel like a citizen of two worlds — and it’s rare to be a citizen of two of the biggest Jewish communities in the world, specifically in a time when they’re spreading apart, and it’s harder and harder to find a common ground.
Alex Rif
Alex is an Israeli-Russian social activist and poet, who is currently a candidate on behalf of the ‘Yashar!’ party with Gadi Eisenkot. She is the founder and former CEO of One Million Lobby, the first and only Israeli non-profit that promotes a better social, economic, state-religious and cultural reality for the 1.2 million Israelis from the former Soviet Union states (IFSU).
I went to the U.S. in 2003, more than 20 years ago, when I was in 11th grade — and I want to jump to the end, which is that yesterday I joined a political party, with Gadi Eisenkot, as a candidate. A lot of the things that Bronfman gave me led me to that, specifically the visit to the U.S., because it was the first time I actually met different communities of Jews.
I come from Soviet Jewry — we came after 70 years of our Jewish culture, stories, heritage, religion being erased — and I didn’t feel connected in Israel to the Israeli Orthodox mainstream. Visiting the U.S. was the first time I saw that there are many ways of being Jewish, and they are all beautiful and profound and meaningful and deep. That was an enormous discovery for me. From the other side, I learned the importance of the connection between Israel and outside of Israel.
I made Aliyah when I was 5, from Ukraine, and like a lot of immigrants I tried to be more Israeli than the Israelis. This trip changed my perspective: there’s a big Jewish peoplehood, and Israel is not the only place. It may be the shelter, the biggest center, but it’s not the only place. It shaped my professional path — for the past 10 years I’ve dedicated my life to the Russian-speaking community in Israel, to issues like conversion and the grandchild clause, which we have to guard, because it’s the only law that gives people who intermarried the chance to come back in a time of need, when antisemitism rises, as we see now in New York.
One of our meetings during the fellowship was with candidates for Congress and people who worked in government — the first time I met high-ranked elected people, and I saw how much good they can do and how much power they have in their hands. It felt like it was in the touch of my hand: if I can meet them, I can be them. It was really empowering, even before I met Israeli officials. I have a picture of myself standing in a meeting room with a U.S. flag, in a very warm coat, at the speaking point, proud and excited — it opened something in my mind.
For me the U.S. is a sister country. Part of my heart is being ripped apart and lives in the U.S. now, with friends who’ve left. The U.S. is the best friend we ever had, and probably ever will have, and we have to do everything we can to save this friendship and this alliance.
Lior Soroka
Lior is a freelance journalist and screenwriter based in Tel Aviv. He reports for The Washington Post, covering the conflict in the Middle East. He is currently writing a play for the Haifa Theatre and co-writing a television series.
It was pretty long ago — back in 1999. I was a teenager then, in 11th grade, and it was a very unique experience going to meet the Jewish communities in the States. In Israel the boundaries of Judaism are very clear: there is a clear boundary whether you’re secular, or religious, or ultra-Orthodox. It felt like in the States there are more possibilities to experience your Jewishness. Part of it, I think, is because in Israel, Judaism and the state are intertwined. You feel that in recent years, even the tension between the different denominations is growing, and I felt it less while I visited the States.
As a Jewish person who lives in Israel, I always felt this deep connection between Israel and the diaspora. It always felt like Israel can be a safe place for Jews, and the Jewish community abroad is also there to support Israel from afar. But recently, since the war broke out, I think a lot of things have changed. Many Jews abroad and in Israel are asking about the path that Israel is taking in the last years, and how it influenced this unique relationship between Israel and the diaspora. Israel needs to remember it, so it won’t lose this strong ally we have with the Jews who live in the States — because some of them are saying they don’t want anything to do with Israel now. It’s becoming harder to identify yourself as a Zionist or pro-Israeli. We don’t need to take this relationship as granted, because we can really lose it.
As a journalist, the main thing is to be curious, and my visit taught me a lot about how things work in the States — it was a first glimpse into American politics and the connection between Jews and the United States. We visited D.C. and met some Congress people, we went to the Holocaust Museum, we met different denominations in New York. It’s better when you see things with your own eyes.
The most meaningful part was a meeting at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the LGBTQ+ community in New York. As a teenager in the closet at 17, to see how Judaism and being gay can go together was very meaningful. A couple of years afterward I came back by myself for a huge Yom Kippur service, thousands of LGBTQ Jews gathering together. In Israel you hear people like Bezalel Smotrich saying these things cannot go together — and in the States, you see how it can work, and does work.”
Hadas Semo
Hadas, 20, studied at Ulpana Tzvia Afula. After national service at Amal High School in Ashdod, she began working in the field of education as a youth counselor.
It was about January 2023, and it was just a wonderful experience. I’d never been abroad before. Everything about the program made it more special, because it was all about our identity as Jews. At the meetings with the people who were from America and were Jews — I was mesmerized most of the time. That’s what stood out to me the most.
Before, I didn’t really think about what the U.S. meant to me; I felt like it was something not connected to me in any way. But when I came there, I felt connected, because I saw the Jews there — it’s not only Israel that has this special energy and this special history. That was the first time I felt like this and saw it with my own eyes, and I feel the connection now. I saw New York as this big city from the movies, so I was very excited, and everything just felt magical.
In my experience as an Israeli Ethiopian, a Black Israeli, I had some thoughts and conflicts being in the program. It’s one thing to be Black in the world and another to be Black in Israel itself, because of all the difficulties we have with racism and fitting into society. When I came to Bronfman I was myself, I sometimes felt a little unconnected to the people, because everyone was a specific type of energy, the way they grew up, and a little white. It was always in my head: I’m a Black Ethiopian in this group. I was the only one — you can tell just by looking. I started wondering who I would be in the U.S., whether I’d just be seen as a Black person there — what they see is what they see, nobody knows I’m a Jew.
In the U.S., the manager of the fellowship arranged a meeting for me with a former fellow who’s biracial, and she told me about her experience as a half-Black Jew in America — the conflicts, the things that come with it. I felt like I needed someone who was like me, who understood me. We had so much fun, and something clicked. It helped me accept who I am and where I am, and understand that no matter what and who and how I am, I’m good as I am — it doesn’t matter the color, or where I came from, or what happened to me before.
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Why I yelled at God on Kol Nidre
Last Kol Nidre, I yelled at God.
My husband was in the hospital. He had been since the day after Rosh Hashanah. I sat in services and thought of a friend of mine’s interpretation of the binding of Isaac: that it had been a test that Abraham had failed, because the whole point was that Abraham was supposed to argue back, and that’s why Abraham and God don’t speak after that moment. “You want me to argue back? Fine,” I snapped in my head to the God I otherwise think of as a metaphor. “Give him back to me.” I choked back tears as the congregation prayed to be inscribed in the Book of Life.
I had really been looking forward to those High Holidays. More specifically, I was looking forward to filling out the little prompts that Reboot sends out every year during the Days of Awe encouraging you to reflect on the year that was and the year that is to come. The year before last, I had written a lot about how badly I wanted a baby. Last year, I had one. My husband and I had welcomed our wonderful son into the world several weeks prior. And unlike most things in life, having a baby was as good as I thought it would be. Better, even. Some days I thought I would crack in half from so much happiness. Not all day, every day, of course. In week 10, in a little postpartum discussion group I’d brought him to, I cried at how much he cried. But the overwhelming mood was one of unbelievable happiness and gratitude. I was looking forward to taking stock of, and basking in, my joy over the course of those 10 days.
On Rosh Hashanah, we brought him to a service for babies and small children. I came home and drank tea with honey and cuddled him and watched the little video I had taken of him cooing as I encouraged him to “say” “Shanah Tovah” and he smiled.
In the next room, my husband was in pain. That night, he was sick. The next day, he went to the hospital. We thought he’d be home that afternoon. Instead, he was there for three weeks. The last of those was largely spent in the ICU, which is where we celebrated our five year wedding anniversary and our son turning three months old. The latent kidney issues we’d always known he had had were now acute. He would be on dialysis and would need a kidney transplant.
For the first couple of months, this seemed strangely manageable. He went to dialysis but he also still went to the office for work. We could still go up and back to New York City from our home in Washington, DC to see our families. We spent Thanksgiving and the holidays with them. We still talked about things like buying a bigger place and going on vacation to different countries and having a second baby.
Then, in the winter, his eyes became yellow. After several months and a genetic test we learned that he had a rare genetic mutation. It was responsible for his diabetes and his kidney issues and, we learned in the spring, for his liver issues, too. He would need not a kidney transplant from a live donor but a kidney and liver transplant from a deceased one.
It took several additional hospital stays to get that answer. Each time, he lost more weight and developed health complications even as the doctors aimed to solve the big ones. I wrote my little articles at various bedsides. I sometimes feel powerless in writing about antisemitism and illiberalism, but that was nothing next to the frustration I felt at my failure to move him through medical morass more quickly, or to magically make him well again.
I made compromises in my head. I would give up this or that. I would take on more of the childcare or housework or whatever else by myself because he couldn’t. I pushed my book deadline back. I pushed it back again. Fine. Take it. Just let me keep my family.
In all of this, our son did not remain a crying 10-week-old. He became, despite everything, a very happy baby, and his every little development—crawling and clapping and cruising—made me happy, too. I watched as he played with his toy cars and flipped through his board books, giggling to himself, and as he grabbed his stuffed Grover in his little hands with dimples on the knuckles. Once, while I was putting him down to sleep, he grinned then blew a raspberry at me. I blew one back. We went on like that, quietly in the dark, making funny noises with our lips and tongues. My husband was in one of his many hospital stays that night and I marveled at how this moment of perfect wonder could be happening amidst my despair.
Our son made everything easier to navigate: I had a purpose and also a daily package of the affirmation of life and mischief. The contrast also made everything hurt. Our baby was so good. Why couldn’t everything be?
I made myself ask for, and accept, help. One friend accompanied my husband to medical appointments when I couldn’t be there. Others babysat our son. Another took our dog to the animal hospital one morning so that I could take our baby to his music class. People baked challah and cooked dinners and sent money for groceries and I hated saying yes but was so grateful that there was so much to say yes to. It won’t always be like this, my husband told me. He said that one day one of our friends will need help and we will know how to be there for them. I tried to remember that it would not be us asking for help forever, and that, in any case, asking for and receiving help was also part of what it meant to have built and be part of a community. That this, too, was what it meant to have a life that is part of a larger whole.
Various people mentioned the Book of Job to me. In some ways, I felt strangely jealous of Job, who at least has the opportunity to argue with the power responsible for his misfortune. If God appeared before me to taunt me, I wouldn’t just sit there and take it, I said. Someone told me that was the whole point. No one was showing up to take the blame because part of what was frustrating was that there was no one, really, to blame. Lots of people told me how unfair this all was. Of course it was. But so what? It wasn’t fair and that was that. Lots of things aren’t fair. Our situation was still more fair than many. The country and the world felt like they were falling apart. I wasn’t special. Lots of people yell at God on Kol Nidre and every other day. Or ask or beg God. And the universe and genetics and their husbands’ doctors, too.
The other thing about the Book of Job, I realized, is that Job had been happy. Did that past happiness make it more painful for him to sit there and listen to God talk about how He, and not Job, had made the oceans? Who cares who made the oceans? Job loved his wife and his children and then they were gone. Some people told me that all of this would make me appreciate what I had. But I had appreciated my little family.
What I had failed to appreciate, despite worrying theoretically about health as much as I did during pregnancy, was how little I had had to think about health in a terrifying and tangible way. An Uber driver on one of my seemingly countless trips to the hospital (why hadn’t I learned to drive?) told me that you have 1000 problems until you get sick, and then you just have one. I wanted to call my other 999 problems back. I missed them. I wished I could go back to when I thought there were books besides the Book of Life.
When he was finally listed for his transplant, we were told it would be a matter of weeks, soon, any day now. Days came and days went and he did not get the call. He ended up in the hospital for a week at a time, twice, for relatively minor complications. The doctors told us how sorry they were that he was there. I thought, but did not say, that the more time he spent in the hospital for reasons that weren’t a transplant and recovery, the harder it was to believe that things would ever get better.
On one of those hospital evenings, we asked each other how much more of this we could take. We wondered aloud whether he would ever get his transplant. And then, hours later, he got the call. About a day later, he had his surgery. Eleven hours after the procedure started, the surgeon told me that it was over and that my husband was fine.
For the first week, I waited every day for some surprise piece of bad news to come. The first week turned into a second week, at the end of which he came home. The first few days were very hard — recovery is a long and arduous process — but I watched my husband work his way back into walking again with a cane at one end of the room while, at the other, our son, armed with only a toy lion in each hand and evolutionary instinct, started to take wobbly steps.
I know this is not the end of the story, and I may never stop expecting things to once again become perilous. We are still in the middle and I don’t know how it will end and nobody can tell me. But I also know now that it is no small thing that a story gets to continue.
I have such grief for the year I thought I was going to have and didn’t. I have such jealousy toward people who get to be parents of babies and not have to think about medical crises. And I feel such joy when I think of our son’s playfulness and curiosity and even his stubborn streak and how he gets it from his father.
I don’t really know what I will take with me from this year into the next, but I know that, as we near these High Holidays, I’ve been thinking of the other story of the season: not Abraham and Isaac, but Jonah. I understand the story differently now.
Often people told me that they didn’t know how I was keeping it together. They wouldn’t be able to, they said. But I knew that they would. They would for the same reason I was able to: I had no other choice. I had to for my husband and my son and, yes, for myself. For as long as you’re alive, you have to keep it together, keep pressing forward, keep pushing, pushing, pushing, heaving yourself out of the belly of the giant fish. “You may not like cold water,” my mother told me the night before my husband had his surgery, “But if your boat is sinking, you need to jump and swim.”
We swim. We try to hold onto light in the dark and we wait for joy to come in the morning. Some days, the joy is just that there is another morning. It hurts so much. But to hold onto yourself and each other and jump and swim is also, I think, what it means to be in love, and to care and be cared for. It is, in other words, what it means to be inscribed in the Book of Life.
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Adidas apologizes for campaign with Israeli veteran amputee after calls to boycott
(JTA) — Adidas has apologized for featuring an Israeli former soldier and amputee in a campaign advertising its service for people with missing legs, which sparked calls for a boycott.
Shalev Biton, who lost his left leg during the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict, appeared in a promotional video for the sportswear company’s Single Shoe service. The program was introduced in Europe earlier this year to allow amputees to buy just one shoe.
The campaign, filmed in Hebrew, showed Biton trying on a single sneaker at a store in Israel and running outside. It did not mention his army service or how he lost his leg. Biton was in a military vehicle that was hit by a missile while on a protective patrol of villages on the Israeli side of the Gaza border, according to Israel’s Channel 12.
After the video circulated widely online, pro-Palestinian activists called for a boycott of Adidas, referencing Gaza’s high number of amputees created by Israeli attacks since October 2023.
Adidas apologized for the campaign on Monday in a statement on the Adidas Arabia Instagram account.
“We recognize that an image used in a recent local activation has raised concerns and strong reactions,” the company said. “It was never our intent to cause offence, and we apologize for anyone affected. We acknowledge the concerns that have been raised and are taking the feedback seriously.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, said the apology from Adidas was insufficient and demanded that the company “immediately remove the Israeli soldier from all Adidas promotional material and channels.”
“Those ‘affected’ are millions of Palestinians living under Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territory, and its decades long settler-colonial apartheid regime,” PACBI said in a statement.
Biton said on his Instagram account that he received “an insane wave of hate” over recent days. In an appeal for support, he told viewers, “I want to feel that you are here with me.”
Gaza has recorded over 5,000 limb amputations due to traumatic injuries, according to a May report from the World Health Organization. The United Nations reports that it has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world.
Adidas weathered another controversy in 2024 for advertising sneakers based on a model first released during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when 11 Israeli athletes were killed by a Palestinian terrorist group. The company faced backlash from Israel and various Jewish groups for choosing Bella Hadid, a Palestinian-American model and vocal pro-Palestinian advocate, to front the campaign. Adidas subsequently dropped Hadid, prompting criticism from pro-Palestinian voices.
Adidas and Biton could not immediately be reached for further details.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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