Urge Lewis Hamilton To Help Convince Puma To End Support for Israeli Apartheid

Dear Lewis Hamilton,

Congratulations on your record-breaking 94th career win and record-tying 7th Formula One title. Your passion and sheer talent have earned you a place in the sports history books.

As remarkable as your career has been, it is the role you choose to play off the track that has been most impressive.

You have stood strong against racism throughout your career. You’ve championed equality and diversity in sports and racing. You have been an outspoken supporter of Black Lives Matter.

For this, too, you will have a place in the history books, alongside the many athletes who have used their platforms to raise awareness and advocate for positive social change.

You recently said, “We all have a responsibility to educate ourselves and raise awareness of the tragedies happening in the world around us and take action where we can”.

I’m taking this opportunity to do just that. I would like to make you aware of your sponsor Puma’s role in human rights abuses and violations of international law.

Puma is the main sponsor of the Israel Football Association (IFA). As documented by Human Rights Watch, the IFA includes teams in illegal Israeli settlements, which are built on stolen Palestinian land in violation of international law. Not only that, the IFA actively lobbies against any sort of accountability measures intended to hold Israel accountable for its illegal settlement enterprise.

Illegal Israeli settlements are central to Israel’s decades-old military occupation and apartheid regime that denies Palestinians their basic human rights. These violent land grabs have forced Palestinian families from their homes, rob Palestinians of their livelihoods, create obstacles to access clean water and healthcare, and hinder their ability to practice sports.

As the Palestinian Speed Sisters, the Middle East’s first all-women professional race car driving team, have said, “No matter which direction we drive in the occupied Palestinian territory, we run up against Israel’s military road blocks, separation wall, and segregated Israeli-only roads and settlements”.

Puma’s international brand identity helps normalize and prolong Israel’s oppressive apartheid regime that South Africans, including Nelson Mandela’s grandson, have said is worse than what they endured under their country’s now defunct apartheid regime.

More than 200 Palestinian sports teams and thousands of human rights supporters around the world are calling upon Puma to end its support for Israel’s military occupation.

Puma has failed to take any action, hiding instead behind a string of tired justifications, as Israel continues to expand its de facto annexation of Palestinian land and to demolish Palestinian homes – nearly 400 since March alone.

As a company, Puma has been trying to do the right thing in support of Black Lives Matter.

What Palestinians are asking of Puma is to recognize that supporting the struggle against racism while simultaneously helping to prop up an apartheid regime is doing a disservice to the calls for equality coming out of the global reckoning with racism.

You can help with this. You have shown enormous influence over Puma. Please take some time to learn more about Puma’s support for Israel’s military occupation. If you think what you see is wrong, and I am sure you will, please help us convince Puma to end its sponsorship of the Israel Football Association as long as it is complicit in violations of Palestinian rights.

You can help ensure that another generation of Palestinians won’t grow up under the oppression of Israeli apartheid.

Thank you.