Nike created a pro Israel shoe

Question

Someone on social media unboxed a new pair of Air Force 1's from Nike that have 2 blue bands and a Star of David. People are claiming that this is a new design in support of Israel's war efforts.

Answer 1

This is missing context. First, these shoes were not officially sold by Nike, which Nike said in a statement to Reuters. The video has a "PNT by Ray" sticker on the shoe box. PNT by Ray is this customization artist that allows you to make requests through a Google form on his Facebook page. The shoes were said to be a gift for a British-Israel writer, Michael Dickson. Ray customized them by PNT but did not endorse them, as Ray said to Reuters. The picture you posted came from an internet archive post when I did the Google image search. Then, once I went upstream on that post. I found that the photo without the banner on top originated from a Facebook post from an account called Tara Cleary. This account has posted a lot of very Pro-Palestine and Pro-Putin content. Not that these opinions are not necessarily wrong; however, he posts fake news to support these opinions. It's like saying a lightning bolt hit the Burj Khalifa, shaped by the state of Palestine. The poster argued it was because god was upset with actions done against Palestinians. This is a prominent stretch of information and is not valid.  Therefore, even before seeing the context-needed banner on the post, one can understand that it is a misleading image due to the content that this poster posts.

Sources:

https://archive.org/details/factcheck-israel-nike-shoes

https://www.facebook.com/tara.cummins.7712/posts/pfbid0AKafSdxMXu8acBULHR4AtdLRpRRExk89LuJASjW3fdcGKmNtgHEUyGoptYF1uerul

https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/nike-air-force-1s-with-israeli-flag-are-customised-by-artist-2024-03-13/

Comments

Thank you for this thorough fact check which shows light onto that actual statements with good sources, but also showing light on what was clearly not said regarding the shoes.

It is clear these shoes were custom made by a personal artist.

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Your fact check is incredibly detailed. Finding what the shoes were actually from and their stance on the situation along with where the photo landed/spread made it clear that the claim  is not true. However, I am curious on why you tagged this as exaggerated/misleading. The claim is false since Nike did not create pro-Israel shoes. Are you tagging it misleading because the shoes are customized and that could potentially mislead a person to believe the claim?