New Balance — Israel Complicity Index

Key Findings

Economic: New Balance’s Israeli website identifies Silon Sports Ltd. as the exclusive importer, and describes the Israeli retail relationship as importer-operated rather than a New Balance-owned subsidiary.¹

Political: New Balance was documented as a Jerusalem Marathon sponsor in 2013–2014; the BDS National Committee’s boycott call cited the event’s route through occupied East Jerusalem and its state-linked organization.²

Military: A retailer retrospective describes a 1990s New Balance 577 version made for the Israeli army, but no primary procurement record, quantities, or current continuation was identified.³

Not found: No public evidence identified of New Balance contracts with Israeli defence, security, intelligence, or government bodies, or of an Israeli digital-surveillance, cloud, or R&D nexus.⁴

Target Profile

Field	Detail
Company Name	New Balance Athletics, Inc.
Jurisdiction	No public evidence identified of country/state of incorporation in the audited record.
Headquarters	100 Guest Street, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.⁵
Sector	Athletic footwear and apparel manufacturer.
Ownership	Privately held; the Davis family is reported to hold an approximately 95% majority stake. Jim Davis is Chairman and Anne Davis is Vice Chairman.⁶
Key Executives / Governance	Jim Davis, Chairman; Anne Davis, Vice Chairman; Joe Preston, President and CEO. New Balance does not publicly disclose a complete board of directors in the audited record.^{6, 7}
Israeli-Nexus Summary	Documented Israeli market activity is through exclusive importer Silon Sports Ltd.; the current exclusive, two-decade importer relationship governs the economic and political assessment. Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship in 2013–2014 and the retailer’s account of 1990s army footwear are historical findings; current procurement is unconfirmed.^{1, 2, 4}

Key Facts:

New Balance is privately held and does not make SEC 10-K or 20-F filings.⁶
Its Israel site identifies Silon Sports Ltd. as the “official and only importer” for the preceding 20 years.¹
Claims that Delta Israel operated a New Balance franchise remain unverified against Delta Israel’s published brand portfolio and the NGO profiles reviewed.⁸

Executive Summary

New Balance’s documented Israel/Palestine nexus is principally commercial and historical. Its own Israeli website states that the site is owned by Silon Sports Ltd., described as New Balance’s official and exclusive importer in Israel. The available record therefore supports an importer/licensee market relationship, rather than a verified New Balance-owned Israeli subsidiary, factory, or Israeli corporate headquarters.^{1, 5}

The current political assessment concerns the continuing exclusive importer relationship as Business-as-Usual.¹ A separate historical political and reputational finding is New Balance’s sponsorship of the Jerusalem Marathon in 2013–2014. The BDS National Committee called for a boycott over that sponsorship, characterizing the race as passing through occupied East Jerusalem and as being organized with Israeli public bodies. The audit does not establish a continuing sponsorship: no public evidence identified confirms New Balance as a sponsor after 2014, and reporting on the 2024 event does not name it among current sponsors.^{2, 9}

The military record is limited. A secondary retailer retrospective states that a New Balance 577 version was made for the Israeli army in the 1990s, but the audits found no primary procurement documentation, contracting terms, quantities, or evidence of a current tactical or defence product line. No public evidence identified of contracts, tenders, supply arrangements, logistics services, or manufacturing links between New Balance and the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IDF, Israel Prison Service, Border Police, or Israeli defence primes.^{3, 4}

The audits also found no public evidence identified of an Israeli digital-security, surveillance, cloud, Project Nimbus, AI, or R&D relationship. New Balance’s documented retail fit-technology relationship is with Volumental, a Swedish-founded 3D foot-scanning company, and no Israeli nexus was identified for that system.¹⁰ On the fixed, human-vetted V6.5 assessment, these findings result in a BRS of 311, placing New Balance in Tier D (Moderate Complicity).

Timeline of Relevant Events

Date	Event
1972	Jim Davis acquired New Balance; the audited corporate-history record identifies no Israel-founding or Israel-ownership nexus.⁶
1990s	A retailer retrospective described a New Balance 577 version made for the Israeli army; procurement details and any continuing arrangement were not established.³
25 February 2013	The BDS National Committee called on New Balance and IHG/Crowne Plaza to withdraw Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship.¹¹
11–12 March 2014	The BDS National Committee renewed its boycott call concerning New Balance’s Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship.²
June 2020	New Balance announced a donation of 10,000 pairs of shoes to Black community organizations in Atlanta in memory of Ahmaud Arbery.¹²
March 2022	New Balance announced a $1 million Ukraine humanitarian-relief pledge and suspended product shipments to Russia.¹³
3 October 2023	New Balance formally announced an expansion of its Volumental mobile foot-scanning and fit-recommendation technology; the audited record identifies no Israeli nexus.¹⁰
2024	Reporting on the 13th Jerusalem Marathon did not name New Balance among current sponsors.⁹

Corporate Overview

New Balance Athletics, Inc. is a privately held U.S. athletic-footwear and apparel company headquartered in Boston. The audited record identifies the Davis family as its controlling ownership group, with Jim Davis as Chairman and Anne Davis as Vice Chairman. Because it is privately held, the company does not publish the SEC-style filings that might otherwise provide granular country-level revenue, subsidiary, risk, or market disclosures.^{6, 7}

The documented Israeli retail structure is an importer relationship. New Balance’s Israel FAQ says the Israeli site is owned by Silon Sports Ltd., which it calls the official and only importer of New Balance in Israel. The site identifies storefronts in Tel Aviv and Rishon Lezion as importer-operated retail activity; the audits found no public evidence identifying them as company-owned New Balance operations.¹

Several consumer-content and boycott-tracking sources allege that Delta Israel, a Delta Galil subsidiary, operates New Balance’s Israeli franchise and that franchise payments support Delta’s settlement-linked activities. That allegation remains unresolved and must not be treated as established. Delta Israel’s official brand portfolio does not name New Balance; neither the reviewed Who Profits nor AFSC Investigate Delta Galil profiles establishes a New Balance relationship.⁸ Delta’s independently documented settlement retail and historical Barkan Industrial Zone warehouse activity therefore cannot be attributed to New Balance on the evidence reviewed.¹⁴

No public evidence identified of New Balance-owned manufacturing, data centres, R&D facilities, innovation labs, direct capital investments, controlling interests, or company-owned retail operations in Israel or the occupied territories. No public evidence identified of New Balance operating in Israeli settlements.^{4, 15}

Domain Summaries

Military: Military

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of New Balance contracts, tenders, memoranda of understanding, or procurement awards involving the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IDF, Israel Prison Service, Israel Border Police, or Israeli defence firms. A review of the Israeli Ministry of Defence SIBAT 2018/19 Homeland & Cyber Defense industry directory did not identify New Balance among the listed enterprises.⁴

A retailer’s 2014 retrospective describes a 1990s New Balance 577 version made for the Israeli army. This is a historical secondary account only: the audits found no primary procurement record, contract, production quantity, end-user documentation, or evidence of a current continuation.³

No public evidence identified of New Balance supplying components or materials to Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael, IMI Systems, or Elbit Land; providing base services or military freight; or producing weapons, munitions, vehicles, tactical systems, or strategic platforms.⁴

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

New Balance’s core business is footwear and apparel, not defence manufacturing, heavy machinery, logistics, or military technology. The only identified military-adjacent claim concerns an historical shoe model and is not corroborated by primary procurement evidence.³

Claims connecting New Balance to Delta Galil’s alleged IDF-uniform manufacturing or to Delta’s settlement activities are not supported by a verified New Balance–Delta relationship. The reviewed Delta-focused NGO profiles document settlement retail and warehouse activity, but do not establish New Balance involvement or an IDF-uniform contract attributable to New Balance.^{8, 14}

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Entity	Evidence status
Israeli Ministry of Defence / IDF / security bodies	No public evidence identified of New Balance contracts or procurement.⁴
Israeli army 577 footwear claim	Historical secondary retailer account; unverified by primary procurement records and not established as current.³
Delta Galil / Delta Israel	Separately documented settlement-linked activity; New Balance relationship unconfirmed.^{8, 14}
Israeli defence primes	No public evidence identified of New Balance supply-chain, co-development, or technology-transfer relationships.⁴

Digital: Digital

Mechanism of Involvement

No public evidence identified of New Balance licensing, subscribing to, integrating, or deploying technology from the Israeli-origin cybersecurity and surveillance vendors reviewed in the audit. No public evidence identified of Israeli data-centre operations, participation in Project Nimbus, digital services for Israeli state bodies, military deployments, AI systems for Israeli security use, or Israeli R&D facilities.¹⁵

New Balance has a documented retail-technology relationship with Volumental. The company uses Volumental’s 3D foot-scanning technology in select stores and through a companion mobile application to provide fit recommendations. Volumental is documented as Swedish-founded; the audits identified no Israeli nexus for this technology relationship.¹⁰

Salesforce describes New Balance using Maps Territory Planning, and Red Van describes its work on New Balance’s Commerce Cloud implementation. These are commercial enterprise-software relationships; the reviewed material identifies no Israel-specific deployment or state-security end user.^{16, 17}

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The identified biometric technology is consumer retail fit technology, rather than facial recognition, population surveillance, predictive policing, military tracking, or intelligence tooling. The audited evidence does not support characterizing Volumental’s foot-shape measurement system as an Israeli surveillance nexus.¹⁰

No public evidence identified of New Balance’s commercial technology being deployed by Israeli military, intelligence, law-enforcement, or government bodies. Assertions of a technology connection through Delta are likewise unsupported because the underlying New Balance–Delta relationship is unconfirmed.^{8, 15}

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Entity	Evidence status
Volumental	Confirmed Swedish-founded retail foot-scanning vendor; no Israeli nexus identified.¹⁰
Salesforce	Confirmed commercial software relationship; no Israel-specific or security-use nexus identified.¹⁶
Project Nimbus	No public evidence identified of New Balance participation.¹⁵
Israeli surveillance/cyber vendors reviewed	No public evidence identified of a New Balance relationship.¹⁵

Economic: Economic

Mechanism of Involvement

New Balance’s documented economic nexus is its Israeli consumer market presence through Silon Sports Ltd. The company’s Israeli site states that Silon Sports owns the site and is New Balance’s official and only importer in Israel. This supports a third-party importer arrangement, not a verified company-owned subsidiary.¹

The same site describes a Tel Aviv factory store and a Rishon Lezion brand store as part of the importer-operated Israeli retail presence. No public evidence identified of employment, tax, market-revenue, licensing-fee, or profit-repatriation figures for the Israeli operation.^{1, 6}

New Balance’s 2013–2014 Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship is also an established economic/brand association. The BDS National Committee’s campaign linked the sponsorship to the event’s route through occupied East Jerusalem and government-linked organization. No public evidence identified confirms New Balance sponsorship after 2014.^{2, 9}

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

The commercial record supports ordinary importer-led market access, not verified New Balance-owned Israeli operations or a settlement operation. Any inference that Israel-market profits flow to the U.S. parent through royalties or licensing payments is inferential, not a disclosed financial fact.¹

The alleged Delta Israel franchise relationship is unverified. Delta Israel’s official portfolio omits New Balance, and the reviewed Who Profits and AFSC profiles do not establish it. Delta’s settlement retail and warehouse activity therefore cannot be used as evidence that New Balance operates in, supplies, or finances settlements.^{8, 14}

No public evidence identified of New Balance manufacturing in Israel, sourcing Israeli agricultural goods, investing in Israeli facilities, holding Israeli operating-company stakes, or operating company-owned retail in settlements.¹⁵

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Entity	Evidence status
Silon Sports Ltd.	Confirmed by New Balance’s Israel FAQ as official and exclusive importer.¹
Tel Aviv and Rishon Lezion stores	Described by New Balance Israel as importer-operated retail presence.¹
Jerusalem Marathon	Historical New Balance sponsorship documented in 2013–2014; no verified current sponsorship.^{2, 9}
Delta Israel / Delta Galil	Alleged franchise relationship unresolved; settlement activity is independently documented but not attributable to New Balance.^{8, 14}

Political: Political

Mechanism of Involvement

The governing current political scenario is the continuing exclusive Silon Sports importer relationship: a public, sustained company-level commercial commitment, described by the first-party FAQ as lasting 20 years. Under the rubric this supports Business-as-Usual, independently of any historical sponsorship.¹

A separate historical political vector is the 2013–2014 Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship. The BDS National Committee called for boycott and divestment, stating that the route traversed occupied East Jerusalem and that the event was organized with the Jerusalem Municipality and Israeli government ministries. The audit records no public evidence that New Balance withdrew in response during that period, while also finding no confirmation of sponsorship in later years.^{2, 9}

No public evidence identified of an official New Balance statement on Israel/Palestine, the 7 October 2023 attacks, or the Gaza war. The audit contrasts that absence with documented corporate responses to other crises: New Balance’s live indexed primary announcement supports a $1 million Ukraine humanitarian-relief pledge and suspended Russian shipments in 2022; direct retrieval of the announcement body was blocked by a JavaScript screen, and announced a 2020 donation of shoes to Atlanta Black community organizations.^{12, 13}

The audit retained a historical federal-lobbying reference for New Balance, but its exact contribution aggregate and donor categories could not be reverified. Chairman Jim Davis has separately documented personal donations to U.S. domestic political causes. The audited record does not establish these as Israel-related activity. No public evidence identified of New Balance corporate support, or Davis-family personal support, for AIPAC, FIDF, JNF/KKL, settlement organizations, Israeli military-welfare bodies, or Israel-focused advocacy PACs.^{18, 19}

Counter-Arguments and Evidence Limits

A historical event sponsorship does not, on its own, establish a continuing state partnership, support for Israeli government policy, settlement activity, or military assistance. The audit found no evidence of current Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship, formal “Brand Israel” participation, governmental partnership beyond the historical event association, or a public Israel/Palestine policy position.^{2, 9}

The documented Ukraine and U.S. racial-justice interventions show that New Balance has made public, resourced statements on other issues; they establish an asymmetry in documented communications, not proof of motive, intent, or a position on the Gaza war.^{12, 13}

Jim Davis’s domestic political donations and New Balance’s federal lobbying disclosure do not establish corporate or personal support for Israel-related advocacy. The company publicly distanced itself from Davis’s 2011 Romney-aligned super-PAC contribution.^{18, 19}

Named Entities and Evidence Map

Entity	Evidence status
Jerusalem Marathon / Jerusalem Municipality	Historical sponsorship and boycott campaign documented for 2013–2014; current sponsorship not established.^{2, 9}
BDS National Committee	Documented source of the 2013–2014 boycott call.²
Jim Davis	Chairman; documented U.S. domestic political giving, with no public evidence identified of Israel-related giving in the audited record.^{6, 18, 19}
New Balance Foundation	Company philanthropic vehicle; no public evidence identified of Israel/Palestine-related grantmaking.²⁰

BDS-1000 Score

Method: V6.5

Domain	I	M	P	V-Domain Score
Military	2.50	0.00	9.00	0.00
Digital	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
Economic	3.50	7.00	7.50	3.50
Political	3.50	7.00	7.50	3.50

V_MAX: 3.50 Avg_OTHERS: 1.17
BRS Score: 311 Tier: D (Moderate Complicity)

Economic and Political jointly reach V_MAX at 3.50. Each rests on the current exclusive importer relationship: Sustained Trade in ECON and Business-as-Usual in POL. The historical Jerusalem Marathon sponsorship has zero present magnitude and does not drive the final total. Its historical impact cannot be combined with the current importer’s magnitude. The Tier reflects the fixed human-vetted V6.5 scores and does not convert unverified Delta, Ahava, IDF-uniform-logo, or current-sponsorship claims into findings.

This evidence-based V6.5 method assesses complete activity scenarios through Impact, Magnitude and Proximity; it is not a finding of legal liability, intent, or responsibility for claims that the audited record could not verify.

Methodology Note

This dossier relies only on the four supplied domain audits and their cited documentary sources.
Impact (I) reflects activity type; M reflects documented scale; P reflects directness of the evidenced nexus.
Each domain uses the highest supported complete I/M/P scenario. Company size, allegation volume and political salience do not independently establish involvement.
Divested, exited, discontinued, or historical operations are treated as mitigated where the evidence supports that characterization; the reviewed 2013–2014 sponsorship is historical, with no subsequent sponsorship established. Its zero present magnitude is not an assertion that a formal withdrawal was documented.
Entity attribution is limited to the company supported by evidence. Delta Galil and Delta Israel’s settlement-related findings are not attributed to New Balance because the alleged franchise relationship was not verified.
Settlement operations, if evidenced for the target entity, may inform both Economic and Political; “No public evidence identified” is used where the audits’ checks found no supporting public record.