Weekly Kibbitz
News of Israeli Marvel hero appearing in upcoming
Captain America movie elicits both excitement
and backlash
to appear in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, will be in the fi lm.

Between 1980 and 2019, Sabra
appeared in 50 issues, according to
a Marvel fandom page. Sabra (also
the word for an Israeli prickly pear,
which has a bristly outside and soft
and sweet inside, and is used as a
nickname for an Israeli person) is a
Mossad agent and police offi cer with
superhuman speed and strength. The
1981 comic that fi rst prominently fea-
tures her involves multiple quotes
and plot points that would be seen as
taboo in a contemporary Hollywood
blockbuster. In the comic, the Incredible Hulk
mistakenly ends up in Tel Aviv, where
he befriends an Arab boy who gets
killed in an attack by identifi ably Arab
terrorists. Sabra (real name Ruth Bat-
Seraph) witnesses the attack and
assumes the Hulk is in cahoots with
the terrorists. She attacks Hulk with
“energy quills,” weakening him, but
the Hulk explains that the boy was his
friend — and references the Israeli-
Palestinian confl ict.

“Boy died because boy’s people
and yours want to own land!” the Hulk
tells Sabra. “Boy died because you
wouldn’t share. Boy died because of
two old books that say his people and
yours must fi ght and kill for land!”
The introduction of the character,
fi rst announced at the Disney D23
expo in Anaheim, California, has
already received backlash. Some on
social media have argued that the
character is an example of Israeli mili-
tary propaganda or used it to criticize
the Israeli government’s treatment of
the Palestinians.

Others have taken issue with the
The Marvel character Sabra first
appeared in a comic strip in 1980.

name of the character, which they
argue is painful for Palestinians, who
associate the word “sabra” with the
former Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps in West Beirut.

During the 1982 Lebanese civil war,
right-wing Lebanese forces murdered
up to thousands of Palestinians and
Lebanese Muslims in the camps, while
Israeli military forces surrounded the
areas; an Israeli inquiry found that
Ariel Sharon, in his capacity as Israeli
Defense Minister, bore “personal
responsibility” for not taking action to
prevent the massacre.

—Jackie Hajdenberg | JTA
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SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Wikimedia Commons/Design by Mollie Suss
In a move that is already thrilling some
Jewish audiences and stirring contro-
versy among other international fans
and activists, Marvel Studios recently
announced that an Israeli comic book
hero will appear in the next install-
ment of its Captain America movie
franchise. “Captain America: New World
Order,” which is set for release in
2024, will feature Israeli actress
Shira Haas as Sabra, a hero who
debuted with a cameo in a 1980
“Incredible Hulk” comic and
appeared as a full character the
following year in a strip set in Israel
titled “Incredible Hulk: Power in the
Promised Land!”
Since the details of Marvel projects
are kept under tight wraps until their
release, it is not known how promi-
nent Haas’s character, the fi rst Israeli



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