Marvel’s Israeli Superhero Sabra Sparks Outrage
Disney’s Marvel has sparked outrage with their featured superhero for its upcoming “Captain America: New World Order” film set to release in 2024 based on the comic introduced in the 80s. It portrays an Israeli woman named Sabra who is an agent of the country’s notorious Mossad agency. Surprisingly, the people of Israel were also irked by the move. The popular comic series came under fire when the storyline was labeled as insensitive as it featured Sabra with the giant Hulk character, his face tear-stained as he shouts at Sabra, the Israeli superhero, as a young Palestinian boy lays lifelessly on the ground, who was killed by alleged Arab ‘’terrorists’. “Boy died because boy’s people and yours both want to own land! Boy died because you wouldn’t share!” the Hulk says. A few panels later, the woman in the white and blue costume with a Star of David on her chest kneels next to the boy. “It has taken the Hulk to make her see this dead Arab boy as a human being,” the comic says. “It has taken a monster to awaken her own sense of humanity.” Not only does it take the death of a child for Sabra to see a Palestinian as a human being, but the use of the words Allah in the comic is insensitive towards Muslims critics say. The superhero’s name Sabra is also problematic because it symbolizes the massacre of over 3,500 refugees mostly Palestinians and some Lebanese Shia at the Beirut Sabra neighborhood at the nearby Shatila refugee camp that took place in September 1982. The Israeli military surrounded the refugee camps to make sure no refugee was allowed to leave, and opened the other gate for the right wing militias to come in and and carry out the massacre. Independent witnesses, including Western journalists were horrified to discover that many victims, especially babies, were mutilated before being killed. Israelis provided military support, logistics, night time vision and bulldozers to carry out the massacre and build mass graves. In a span of 40 years, Sabra’s character has appeared alongside quite a few of Marvel Comics’s superheroes and will now be a poignant part of their upcoming movie. However, the origin of the superhero has been labeled as immensely racist and anti-Muslim, a story that desensitizes Palestinian lives. It also promotes Mossad who is known for using aggressive surveillance technology to spy on Palestinians and even killed several renowned Palestinians such as the revered writer Ghassan Kanafani. The character Sabra, is depicted as a police officer with Israeli military training, an organization that has mercilessly killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the years. The comic also allegedly labeled the Palestinians as Arabs, a term used by Israel to ostensibly extinguish the Palestinian identity. Critics have cited that several characters Sabra encounters are portrayed as misogynistic, antisemitic and violent. “That comic doesn’t suggest anything positive about how this film will play out,” said Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American writer and analyst from Washington, D.C. “The whole concept” of turning Israeli spies into heroes “is insensitive and disgraceful.” “The glorification of violence against Palestinians specifically and Arabs and Muslims more broadly in mass media has a long and ugly history in the West and it has remarkable staying power,” he added. Waleed F. Mahdi, author of “Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation,” said the “US-Israeli alliance” in cinematic narrative since the 1960s has celebrated American and Israeli law enforcement and intelligence agencies as good forces “committed to deterring violence that has been chiefly linked to Arabs and Muslims.” Back in 1978, Israeli comic book artist Uri Fink brought the character Sabraman to life, a series of comics portraying an Israeli superhero whose overall ensemble bore a close resemblance to Marvel’s Sabra character, which appeared in Marvel comics two years later. The name Sabra, in Hebrew loosely translates as the fruit of a cactus, commonly known as a prickly pear, and much like the meaning of her name, the character of Sabra from the Marvel comics is likely to prick the sentiments of millions once the new movie is released in 2024.
Written by Zamena Manekia Manji, voice by Fatima El-Zein, produced by Mehrab Hasan
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