Arab Donald Duck voice actor ‘proud’ he was sacked

The voice actor who formerly voiced Donald Duck in Middle East-broadcasted cartoons before posting anti-Israel messages on Twitter celebrated his dismissal this week.

Wael Mansour, an Egyptian television and radio presenter who was officially fired by Disney in January for calling on the destruction of Israel, expressed his pride following his dismissal.

“I am proud of what happened, I do not regret it at all as it was exactly how I felt at that time,” Wael Mansour told Al Arabiya News.

“I am against Zionism and Israel but I love the Jews,” he highlighted several times during the conversation clarifying that he even got text messages from Jews telling him that they respected his opinion.

Last week, Mansour wrote on his personal twitter account: “Disney decided I am no longer the official voice of Donald Duck in its middle-east dubbed cartoons because of an anti-Zionism tweet. Proud!”

Speaking about Disney’s decision, Mansour said the company misunderstood the tweet but that he respects their choice to fire him.

“Everyone should be free to say or do what they want. It is not my problem how they interpreted what I wrote,” Mansour said.

“Now, I understand what they come from especially that it is an International organization which cares about its image,” he added.

Masreya Media, the Cairo-based company in charge of handling Mansour’s contract with Disney refused to comment on the dismissal decision.

Death wish

The voice actor was sacked after he wrote: “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!”

The tweet which was written “out of emotion,” came after Mansour watched a short footage of an Israeli soldier beating a Palestinian mother in front of her children, Mansour said.

Mansour had also mentioned in other tweets that Israelis were “a bunch of Polish/Ethiopian immigrants roughly 70 years old.”

Speaking about Mansour’s anti-Israel messages, Abigail Disney, the grand-niece of Walt Disney, called the tweets “repellent,” the British daily news website The Independent reported on Thursday.