Several residents contacted 5TC after a photo of the Kas Karpet store began circulating around Whatsapp groups and social media. In the photo, the store is displaying a large carpet with a watermelon in their storefront.
In response to the ongoing war and the mass debates around it, people have been using watermelon images to communicate solidarity with the Palestinians & Hamas — because the fruit’s colors match the Palestinian flag.
5TC reached out to Kas Carpet for comment, and they immediately informed us that this was completely not their intent. They apologized and asked that we share the following statement with the community.
“Dear Community,
It has come to our attention that we unintentionally offended people in the community that we have proudly served for the past 55 years.
We’d like to begin by apologizing for unintentionally offending anyone by our window display.
Some explanation is appropriate. As many of you may know, for decades, we have hung various rugs in our front window.
The rug involved here had a design of a watermelon. By way of background, the rug in question is from a collection from a reputable manufacturer known as Well Woven. The collection, which is called Apollo, includes other food logos that we also carry, including avocados, tacos and in this case, watermelons.
We have carried this collection on and off for a number of years. The design has existed long before the current conflict in Israel and to our knowledge has nothing to do with such conflict. To be clear, no one at Kas Carpet ever realized any connection between this design and the current situation. Had we realized the connection, we would have removed the design from our store.
We are constantly rotating our merchandise on our display windows. Again, we had no knowledge of the meaning behind the watermelon symbol.
As soon as we were notified by our customers, the rug was immediately removed from our window and also from all the racks in the store.
Again, we deeply apologize for inadvertently offending our Jewish neighbors and the community that we have been serving for the past 55 years. Our deepest apologies to anyone who was offended. That was never our intent. We hope you will understand and we thank you for the privilege of serving our community.
Sincerely, Kas Carpet”
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* Editor’s Note: Comments have been disabled for this post. Please be aware, commenting is used and encouraged for respectful dialog and not for spewing hatred.
