In 2017, DCEU published a version of the story as a film. This featured Gal Gadot, an Israeli actress in the titular role. Almost immediately, following the release of the film calls for the film’s boycott began because of the visible association between the lead actress and the Zionist faction in Israeli politics. When Gadot was 18 she won the Miss Israel component of Miss World. When she was twenty she has not only enlisted in the Israeli Defence Force as a combat instructor, but she is also unabashedly proud of her service. In fact, she considers military service integral to her and any Israeli identified individual, meaning she is unwavering in her support of state-sanctioned violence.
During the suppression of Gaza that took place in the summer of 2014, where 2100 Palestinians were killed, 495 children and 253 women, Gadot posted the following on Facebook.
This contrasts strongly with Marston and Gaines’ original vision of the character.
It is unacceptable in the modern world to separate the real life of a performer from the role they play. It is unacceptable to make excuses that the film is feminist because it stars and has been directed by a woman, when the selection of the lead was bound to court controversy. The Facebook post was deleted after the film’s release, illustration that the Hollywood machine that made this Blockbuster, was aware of the sensitivities inherent in their casting, but didn’t regard the fate of the Palestinian people as a high enough concern to warrant the deletion of the Facebook post by the multi millionaire actress. This audience member is concerned about the political attitudes of the senior cast member which cannot be disengaged from the performance or its millitaristic or symbolic context.
The bombing of Gaza in 2014 was condemned by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and a plethora of other human rights organizations.
It is estimated that rebuilding Gaza will take 100 years at the rate that supplies are coming in. Gaza has been described as an "open-air prison" where 95% of the population is forced to drink contaminated water and 54% of the population is food-insecure due to the Israeli army's land, sea, and air blockade, which prevents even basic goods necessary for survival from getting in.
In regard to the massive deficiency of food and water in Gaza stemming from the blockade, Dov Weisglas, a former advisor to Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu said,"The idea is to put Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."
70% of children in Gaza suffer from nightmare and 75% from bedwetting as a result of the psychological effects of this life of blockade and constant bombing.
Gadot's position as some sort of icon of feminism and woman's liberation is also laughable given the horrific effect that the Israeli occupation has on women. Israeli policies assure an increase in the number of miscarriages by Palestinian women by forcing them to go into labor at military checkpoints, or through the blockage of basic resources like water and medical supplies.
Members of Netanyahu's cabinet have also explicitly called for genocide of Palestinians such as Israeli Minister of Justice, Ayalet Shaked, who suggested that every Palestinian woman must be killed because they give birth to "little snakes."
Thinking about South Africa, I am reminded of the importance of cultural boycotts. Boycott, divestment, and sanctions are not just about the financial sector. They are about rejecting entertainers and artists who are also complicit in apartheid. It is for that reason that it is imperative, for the sake of millions of Palestinian women living under occupation for over half a century, that we all not take part in the glorification of someone who supports the Israeli government's horrific atrocities. We should morally boycott the Wonder Woman movie, lead actor Gal Gadot, whose character is anti-war. The evidence on social media shows that she is an ardent Zionist, totally imbued with anti Palestinian hatred, and a fan of the army.
Why do we need a fictional Superhero as a female or male role model. We sure do have real life heroes who kick ass every day. Look at Palestinian women, every female is a superhero of her own; crossing a checkpoint, protecting her children from army rides, making a living and raising families in a strip that had been sieged for 11 years, and hand in hand they make the best of the little they have. Heroism is about celebrating one's perfections and imperfections. Superpowers are humanity, compassion, kindness, and standing up for justice. We don't need a movie to celebrate a role model, we just need a realisation that we are all heroes and there are some real life examples out there who took the extra mile and became a real life superhero.
As I sadly witnessed a good chunk of my self-identified “radical” peers flock movie theaters to watch Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, I feel compelled to remind them of Bell Hooks’s legendary words: Patriarchy has no gender. Warfare is patriarchy in action. There are ABC’s to everything, and when it comes to feminism one of those is that the true ethos of feminist liberation cannot coexist with violence and domination. Liberal “feminism" is not only flawed, it’s patriarchal. Its maximalist conceptualization of power in terms of accumulation of capital uncannily resembles patriarchy. We cannot conveniently essentialize patriarchy as innate or inherent to men in an effort to excuse the oppressive behavior of women. Patriarchy is learnt behavior, it is a way of knowing and existing in the world. Gal Gadot, much like Hilary Clinton, identifies with the institution of the military and armed forces, an institution that is male-dominated, male-centered, and male-identified, the three pillars of patriarchy.
If you must label Gadot as "feminist," do not forget the “patriarchal” identifier, her feminism is a cloak masking her otherwise unapologetic patriarchal values. The institution Gadot shamelessly identifies with has terrorized, murdered, raped, displaced, expelled, harassed, blackmailed, and oppressed countless of Palestinian women, their partners and children. So maybe before you rush back to your laptops after passively consuming the whitewashing of an Apartheid apologist to give Wonder Woman a 99.99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for featuring a strong female-lead, think of those neatly disenfranchised from what is rightfully theirs and how you are part of the problem.
It is time to let actors know we will hold them accountable for normalising anti-Palestinian violence, regardless of their nationality! Explaining the reasons for such choices is critically important. As such, one can explain that one does not wish to view Wonder Woman because the central character, a hero out to save the world, is played by a woman who cheers on genocide.
