Pizza Hut Israel fires an advertising firm responsible for a Facebook ad that mocked Marwan Barghouti, the leader of a mass Palestinian hunger strike, after he was filmed snacking in his cell.
The ad on Pizza Hut Israel’s Facebook page was deleted, and the parent company said in a statement that the post was “completely inappropriate.”
Marwan Barghouti eating in his cell, in footage released May 7, 2017, by the Israel Prisons Service (Channel 2 screenshot)
In a statement released by Pizza Hut International’s Middle East Twitter account on Tuesday, the company says it apologized for any offense and said the ad “does not reflect the values of our brand.” A spokesman for Pizza Hut’s parent company in the US, Yum! Brands Inc., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Erez Rubenstein, a partner at the Israeli advertising company behind the ad, confirmed his firm had been dismissed and said the Facebook post was regrettable in hindsight. “We didn’t mean to offend anybody,” he says.
— AP
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