The voice of Donald Duck in the Middle East has been fired after saying he had “so much hate inside me” and called for the destruction of Israel.
Wael Mansour, an Egyptian radio personality, celebrated his dismissal from the cartoon on Twitter, saying he was “proud” he had been fired.
“Disney decided I am no longer the official voice of Donald Duck in its Middle-East dubbed cartoons because of an anti-Zionism tweet,” he said in a message to his followers, which surged from 5,000 on 7 February to more than 30,000 today.
The offending tweet, which he sent in August, said: “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!” Mr Mansour also referred to Israelis as “a bunch of Polish/Ethiopian immigrants roughly 70 years old”.
Abigail Disney, the grand-niece of Walt Disney, said his tweets were “repellent”. Ms Disney recently said she “loved” a speech by Meryl Streep which described Walt as a “hideous anti-Semite”.