It’s a mystery that’s fit for a Hollywood movie. On Tuesday, multiple media outlets reported that Disney had caved to anti-Israel activists and removed the Israeli identity of Sabra, one of the few Jewish-Israeli superheroes, in the upcoming movie, “Captain America: Brave New World.”
On Wednesday, however, the entertainment news website TheWrap, citing two anonymous “insiders,” reported that the character will retain her Israeli identity and accent, but will no longer be a Mossad agent, as she was in the comics.
Whatever the truth, it’s noteworthy that Sabra’s Israeli identity became an issue in the first place. Marvel announced that the Jewish superhero would be included in the next Captain America movie at Disney’s D23 Expo in 2022.
Almost immediately, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) launched a letter-writing campaign, claiming that including an Israeli character in the movie would “contribute to whitewashing the crimes of Israel’s government,” which it accused of “practising apartheid against Palestinians” and committing “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
I’ve previously written about AMP’s involvement in the anti-Israel campus protests and allegations that it is run by the same people who operated non-profits that were shut down in the early 2000s for having close associations with, and providing funding to, Hamas.
AMP itself is now facing similar allegations: on Wednesday, a U.S. court ordered the charitable organization to hand over a series of documents, in a case in which Virginia’s attorney general charges that AMP “knowingly used or permitted the use of funds … to provide support to terrorists, terrorist organizations, terrorist activities or family members of terrorists.”
Although AMP rose to prominence recently due to its support for the anti-Israel university encampments, it’s campaign against Sabra shows that it has been working for years to delegitimize Israel and Israeli identity in popular culture.
A 2013 report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) listed AMP among the “Top 10 anti-Israel groups in the U.S.,” saying that it is the “leading organization providing anti-Zionist training and education to students and Muslim community organizations in the country.”
According to the ADL, AMP’s conferences and mailing list regularly feature people who glorify terrorism and denigrate Jews.
In 2011, it co-sponsored a speaking tour that sought to compare the plight of Palestinians to Jews during the Holocaust and featured speakers who accused Israel of using “Nazi tactics” and claimed Israelis were exploiting the Shoah to dehumanize Palestinians.
In March 2013, timed to coincide with the first day of Passover, AMP put up a billboard in New York showing a silhouette of an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at a Palestinian child and accusing Israel of being an “apartheid” state.
AMP is also a leading proponent of the anti-Israel BDS campaign, both on and off campus.
In his chapter in the 2016 book, “Antisemitism in North America: New World, Old Hate,” historian Asaf Romirowsky describes AMP as a “racist and eliminationist” organization that’s an integral part of the “unholy alliance of far left organizations and foundations … and Muslim Brotherhood backed Islamists” that form the BDS movement.
Romirowsky notes that the BDS movement has placed an increasing emphasis on “anti-normalization,” demanding that “no Muslim or Arab engage in any way with poisonous Israelis or even Jews, lest the cause of restoring a wholly Muslim Palestine be compromised.”
In recent times, groups like AMP have made a concerted effort to couch their antisemitism in the language of anti-Zionism. In its campaign against Captain America, for example, AMP made no mention of Sabra being Jewish, but said it was “distasteful” to have a character from the “State of Israel,” and highlighted her background as an agent of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
The goal is to remove the association between Jews and their homeland in media and popular discourse, to make way for the false narrative that Jews are colonizers in their own land. We saw an example of this here in Canada in May, when Sheridan College sociology professor Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui lashed out at the Peel District School Board for displaying an Israeli flag at her child’s school during Jewish Heritage Month.
Only those on the outer fringes of society would complain that Captain America is “distasteful,” that CIA agents shouldn’t be portrayed in film because the agency has been involved in some unsavoury practices over the years or that it’s “highly inappropriate” to display a Greek flag during Greek Heritage Month. But when it comes to Israel, demands such as these have become routine due to the efforts of groups such as AMP.
It’s unfortunate that Disney’s decision to include an Israeli character in a movie has put the media giant between a rock and a hard place.
Rather than a Mossad agent, the press release for the new movie describes Sabra as a U.S. government employee who graduated from the Soviet Black Widow program. This may have been done to appease the anti-Israel crowd, but it’s just as likely that her backstory was changed to make it fit into the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe and appeal to an American audience, which happens all the time.
Allowing Sabra to retain her Jewish-Israeli identity will no doubt anger AMP and its backers, who don’t want to give any legitimacy to the Israeli experience, while deviating too far from the original character will put off Jewish audiences.
The real test will be whether Sabra retains the Star of David on her uniform. Either way, anyone who hoped to escape the world of Middle Eastern politics for a couple hours by watching a mindless superhero movie will be sorely disappointed.
National Post
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