BDS renews calls for boycott of Captain America: Brave New World for including Israeli superhero Sabra

The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement (BDS), Jewish Voice for Peace, and Movement for Black Lives is calling for intensified pressure on Disney and Marvel to drop the pro-Israel propaganda character Sabra (Ruth Bat Seraph) that has been revived for the upcoming film Captain America: Brave New World.

Marvel sparked calls for a boycott in September 2022 after announcing it is bringing back the superhero first introduced in the 1980s Hulk comics. Israeli actor Shira Haas was selected to play the role. But following backlash from pro-Palestine groups, the studio said makers would be “taking a new approach to the character.”

Last week, Marvel dropped the trailer for the film set to release next February, which portrays Sabra as a “high-ranking US government official” instead of a Mossad agent, which she is in the comics.

The rebranding is also drawing criticism from pro-Israel groups and publications, who see the move as a means to diminish Israeli and Jewish representation onscreen. But it has done little to appease pro-Palestine groups either.

“By reviving the anti-Palestinian character, these companies are complicit in genocidal Israel’s propaganda,” a post on the advocacy groups’ pages read. The post also comes hot on the heels of the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, a Marvel and Disney collaboration.

“We call for boycotting Disney+ subscriptions, Marvel merchandise and all screenings of Captain America: Brave New World,” the BDS National Committee, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Movement for Black Lives added. “Disney’s superficial changes to the character cannot erase its decades-long complicity in Israeli propaganda.”

In 2023, over 25 Palestinian cultural organisations, including theatres and performing arts centres, called for widespread boycotts of the film, which was then called Captain America: New World Order.

The latest post acknowledges that while Sabra will no longer be going by her alter-ego, and will instead remain Ruth Bat-Seraph — a former Black Widow — by keeping her character in the film, Disney and Marvel are “complicit in glorifying Israel’s genocide” because the character has long glorified violence against Palestinians.

On top of that, it is being played by Haas, who got a medical exemption from the Israeli military service due to her “stunted growth” because she suffered from a form of cancer while she was a toddler, despite which she voluntarily enlisted herself in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Military Band and theatre unit.

“We have together won an important partial victory,” the groups said, “[but] we must escalate our tactics until the character is dropped for good.”

The anti-Palestinian character of Ruth Bat-Seraph was introduced by Marvel in 1980. The character’s shameful history of “complicity in anti-Palestinian racism, Israeli propaganda, and the glorification of settler-colonial violence against Indigenous people,” as Palestinian cultural organisations have said, cannot be altered or erased, according to the post.

“Even the largest entertainment corporations like Disney are susceptible to grassroots pressure when they harm Palestinians. Let’s use our collective power to demonstrate that racism against Palestinians is simply unacceptable,” the groups urged.

Marvel has yet to comment on the development.