Lebanon calls for ban of Wonder Woman over Israeli lead Gal Gadot

CRITICS may be raving about Wonder Woman — but there’s one country that wants to ban the movie from ever hitting its screens.

SHE’S taken on powerful villains across the globe, but this super hero may have met her match — the nation of Lebanon.

Officials in the Middle East country are swooping in to ban the new Wonder Woman in movie theatres because its star is an Israeli, according to a new report in local newspaper The Daily Star (via Arab News).

Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman. Photo: Clay Enos/Warner Bros. Entertainment via AP

The country’s ministry of economy wants to ban the Amazing Amazon because its lead actress — Gal Gadot — has praised the Israeli military on social media, claims a Lebanese security official.

“[Soldiers] are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas,” the 32-year-old actress wrote on Facebook in 2014, during the Gaza-Israel war.

An advance screening of the action flick — based on the DC Comics hero and feminist icon — is still scheduled for Wednesday in Beirut, where posters and digital billboards for the movie have popped up.

The boycott group Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel-Lebanon has pushed for the ban, calling the Israeli-born actress and model a soldier in the Israeli army.

Lebanon is officially at war with Israel and has a decades-old law that boycotts Israeli products and bars its citizens from travelling to the country and having contact with its citizens.

The country is allowed more freedom of expression than other countries in the region but is still subject to censorship.

A formal request for the movie ban had not yet been filed, the Lebanese security official said.

He also explained a ban on the film would ultimately come from the country’s interior minister, following a recommendation from the six-member committee.

Despite the controversy in Lebanon, it is still scheduled to hit the theatres as scheduled on June 22 in Oman and June 29 in Bahrain. In Australia, Wonder Woman opens Thursday, June 1.

Officials at the Lebanese economy ministry, a six-member committee, were not immediately available for comment.

You can read our review of Wonder Womanhere.

This story originally appeared in the NY Post and is republished here with permission.

Originally published as Lebanon calls for ban of Wonder Woman over Israeli lead Gal Gadot