Bella Hadid offered a response on Monday to the controversy surrounding her involvement in a recent Adidas campaign featuring shoes inspired by the 1972 Munich Games.
The ”SL 72” running shoe campaign, released earlier this month, coincided with the 52nd anniversary of the Munich Games, where 11 Israeli coaches and athletes were massacred by Palestinian terrorists. Though the shoes and campaign made no mention of the tragic incident, a statement from the pro-Israel American Jewish Committee condemned Hadid’s involvement in the campaign because of the model’s support of relief efforts for Palestinians in Gaza amid the war between Hamas and the Israeli Defense Forces.
For Adidas to pick a vocal anti-Israel model to recall this dark Olympics is either a massive oversight or intentionally inflammatory. Neither is acceptable,” the AJC’s statement read.
“I would never knowingly engage with any art or work that is linked to a horrific tragedy of any kind,” Hadid wrote in a lengthy Instagram story on Monday. “In advance of the campaign’s release, I had no knowledge of the historical connection to the atrocious events in 1972. I am shocked, I am upset, and I am disappointed in the lack of sensitivity that went into this campaign. Had I been made aware, from the bottom of my heart, I would never have participated.”
