Australian supermarket retailer Kmart has pulled out its festive gift bag from its website after the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) noticed a spelling pattern that sounded similar to Hamas.
The Christmas food-themed bag featured the pun "ham-mas" in large lettering, the BBC reported.
According to the now-deleted product page on Kmart's website, the bag featured "printed instructions to keep your ham fresh for longer" on one side, and the words "Merry HAM-MAS" on the other.
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#BREAKING: Kmart's ham bag will be PULLED FROM ALL STORES after the Australian Jewish Association wrote to Wesfarmers asking for it to be removed | @6NewsAU pic.twitter.com/QnsqYQq2g6
— Leonardo Puglisi (@Leo_Puglisi6) November 8, 2023
Badly-Noticed Pun
The AJA "politely suggested" that the bag be removed from sale because of the unintentional likeness to Hamas, which was a proscribed terrorist group in Australia and several other countries.
"Although this is potentially funny (the AJA committee has tossed around some non-PC jokes) it's really not a good look," the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "We suspect some product manager may cause the company some embarrassment."
In response, Wesfarmers apologized for the product., saying that they had contacted the AJA and assured the bag would be removed from its website.
"We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologize unreservedly," the company said in a statement issued to The West Australian. "When designing this product we clearly didn't think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale."
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