Navigate to News section

Donald Duck’s Anti-Semitic Tweets Ruffle Feathers

Disney fires famous fowl’s Arabic voice-over artist for extreme statements

by
Liel Leibovitz
February 12, 2014
(Ye Olde Tablet Photoshoppe)
(Ye Olde Tablet Photoshoppe)

It’s been a long, hot summer for Donald Duck. In August, he sat at his computer, logged on to Twitter, and waxed anti-Semitic: “I truly wish #Israel is demolished, I hate Zionism, I have so much hate inside me with every single child they murder or land they seize!”

Disney didn’t much like it. Last week, the company notified Wael Mansour, the tweets’ author and the voice of Donald Duck in cartoons dubbed into Arabic, that his services would no longer be needed. Like the defiant duck he helped make famous in the Middle East, Mansour responded by tweeting that he was proud of his termination and his views alike. Perhaps Yosemite Sam would’ve been a better fit.

Here is the tweet that lead Disney to end my role as Donald Ducks official voice in Arabic dubbed cartoons in the ME pic.twitter.com/ZLdpN1NrMF



— Wael Mansour (@Wa2elMansour) February 6, 2014

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.