An Australian supermarket was forced to pull one of its festive items and apologise following concerns over a Christmas pun: “Merry Ham-mas!”
Kmart released a drawstring bag with this phrase written in large letters on the side as part of its Christmas collection, but the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) suggested it could be seen as an unintentional reference to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The bag was designed to store a Christmas ham in the fridge, as the meat is normally centre stage for Australian Christmas holidays. On the other side of the bag were instructions “to keep your ham fresh for longer” according to the product page.
However, in the context of recent world events, the Jewish organisation said it “politely suggested” the bag should be taken off the market, because the slogan sounds like the word Hamas.
Hamas, the group of Palestinian militants who launched an attack on Israel and killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 others hostage last month, has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK, the US and Australia among others.
Writing on X, the AJA said: “Although this is potentially funny (the AJA committee has tossed around some non-PC jokes) it’s really not a good look.
“We suspect some product manager may cause the company some embarrassment.
“So we’ve politely written to Wesfarmers corporate suggesting the product be pulled.”
An hour after that initial post, the Australian Jewish Association said it had been contacted by senior management at the parent company with confirmation it would be removed from the site.
The retail chain’s owners, Wesfarmers, apologised, and as of Thursday morning, the product was no longer accessible on the Kmart site.
In a statement issued to The West Australian outlet, a spokesperson said: “We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologise unreservedly.
“When designing this product we clearly didn’t think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale.”