The Australian Jewish Association (AJA) has celebrated a “success” after Kmart yanked a novelty Christmas bag from its shelves because the product is printed with a pun that’s similar to the word “Hamas”.
On Thursday afternoon, the centre-right Jewish group posted to social media that it had written to Wesfarmers, the parent company of Kmart, over its $4 ham bag product which is emblazoned with the text “Merry HAM-MAS!”
“Although this is potentially funny (the AJA committee has tossed around some non-PC jokes) it’s really not a good look,” it wrote.
“We suspect some product manager may cause the company some embarassment (sic).”
Just an hour later, the group followed up with a post saying that the product was being removed from Kmart’s stores and website.
A spokesperson for Kmart confirmed to Crikey that it had removed the product from sale.
“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,” it said in an email.
Amid a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Australia and against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war, the AJA’s complaint drew backlash on social media.
The group “Jews Against Fascism” sarcastically congratulated the AJA for Kmart’s decision. “Hats off to the Australian Jewish Association for striking a major blow to the solar plexis (sic) of antisemitism today: a Christmas themed bag to keep ham fresh,” they posted.
John Curtin Research Centre’s executive director Nick Dyrenfurth called it a farce and tagged on X the co-CEO of Australia’s Executive Council of Australian Jewry Alex Ryvchin.
“Yep not really high on the community’s list of priorities at the moment,” Ryvchin replied.
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