‘Merry Ham-mas’ bags pulled from Australian supermarkets

Kmart company apologises, saying ‘we clearly didn’t think through all implications’

Australian store chain Kmart has taken a controversial Christmas-themed ham bag off the shelves after its name sparked anger for resembling militant group “Hamas”.

The bag to store ham for the Christmas season featured a punny message “Merry Ham-Mas” emblazoned on it and had instructions at the back.

The retail giant apologised and pulled the item from stores and its website after the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) issued a complaint to its parent company Wesfarmers.

The AJA said it had “politely suggested” Wesfarmers to take down the sale because of its resemblance to Hamas, which has been proscribed as a terrorist group in Australia and the US, among other countries.

The controversy blew up at a time when Israel continued to pound the Gaza Strip since last month after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on 7 October and killed 1400 people, taking 240 hostages. Israel has responded with airstrikes and launched a ground operation on the enclave that has claimed 10,000 Palestinian lives.

AJA said in a post on X on Wednesday: “Check out the special Christmas bag currently available via Kmart online. Yes, it’s real!!

“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.”

Later, the association confirmed that it was contacted by the retail company’s "senior management" to confirm the bag was being removed from all stores.

Wesfarmers, the Perth-based group, issued an apology and said they didn’t think it through.

"We got it wrong on this occasion, and we apologise unreservedly,” a spokesperson said.

"When designing this product we clearly didn’t think through all the implications and the product has been removed from sale."