Amazon has yanked a Halloween witch listing that displayed a Star of David on its spell book after New York City lawmakers demanded its removal.
The $219 animatronic, sold by third-party vendor Collective Home, now shows as “currently unavailable” with no restock date listed. The six-foot decoration had drawn fierce criticism from the City Council’s Antisemitism Task Force, which formally complained to the e-commerce giant on Oct. 14.
The controversy erupted after a Brooklyn woman unknowingly placed the witch on her front lawn and later discovered the offensive imagery on its spell book, which featured Stars of David covered with black paint. “I’m very upset, this is horrible,” the woman said, adding, “I don’t want to insult any religion. I’m sensitive about these things. I’m a big supporter of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Brooklyn Republican who co-chairs the task force, praised the takedown in a statement Wednesday. “Having a witch with a Star of David spell book conjures up age old libels about Jews—a tone deaf decoration in today’s climate. I’m delighted to see the Task Force’s concerns so imminently addressed,” she said.
The bipartisan group had warned Amazon that “such imagery can reasonably be perceived as demeaning to Jewish people and hurtful to members of the Jewish community. It may also incite violence against the Jewish community,” they wrote in their letter to the company.
Amazon confirmed to The Post that the third-party seller removed the product from its page.
The task force’s swift action marked a rare moment of bipartisan agreement on combating antisemitic imagery in consumer goods. Vernikov’s Republican affiliation in the heavily Democratic council underscores the cross-party urgency that lawmakers attached to the complaint.
The Brooklyn homeowner’s inadvertent purchase highlighted how casual shoppers could unknowingly display hate-linked symbols. Her distress upon discovering the Stars of David on her lawn decoration prompted her to speak out publicly about the incident.
Amazon’s marketplace model, which hosts millions of third-party sellers, has repeatedly faced scrutiny over offensive or inappropriate merchandise that slips through content moderation. The company typically defers responsibility for individual listings to their sellers unless violations trigger removal protocols.
The task force’s Oct. 14 intervention came within days of the initial report about the Brooklyn woman’s discovery, demonstrating the council members’ rapid mobilization on what they viewed as a pressing community concern.
Collective Home has not issued any public statement regarding the removal or the imagery that prompted the outcry.