Marvel Studios and Disney angered Jews and Israelis on Friday when an official summary of the upcoming ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ film indicated that a Jewish superhero had been stripped of her Israeli identity.
The Mossad mutant super agent character Ruth Bat-Seraph is now just another Russian spy, apparently also no longer identified by the alter-ego Sabra, which is based on a term used to compare Israelis to the prickly pear of the same name.
Given Marvel’s tendency to apply retroactive continuity to its comics series so that the source material reflects its film and television universe, it is not impossible that Sabra’s Israeli identity could be retconned accordingly.
Marvel and Disney have long championed diversity, inclusion, and representation in their content and characters. They have accordingly ensured that people from a wide variety of backgrounds and identities have been depicted in their films and television shows.
While Jewish creators like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created many of Marvel’s most popular characters, Jewish heroes aren’t acceptable among the inheritors of the company. Israeli actors like Shira Haas or Gal Gadot can be cast as a former Russian super spy turned political advisor or a Greek demi-goddess turned superhero, but Disney and Marvel finds their true identities to be politically and culturally distasteful enough to violate their priority principles. The Hollywood standard of representation does not seem to apply to Israelis, who are apparently too controversial to be heroes, super or otherwise.
The idea behind the diversity and inclusion media principles is that people can only identify and sympathize with a character if they share the same skin color or religion. Superheroes can only inspire and instill higher values if they look just like us.
While appearance and identity are important enough for Marvel and Disney to revoke unfavorable backgrounds like that of Israelis, if anything is to be understood from the quality and success of recent entries into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the studio has forgotten what truly makes a hero admirable: their actions. The October 7 war may have made Israelis too controversial for Hollywood, but it is the actions of Israelis during this period that have shown how heroes act.
Israel has its own heroes
True Israeli heroes have not been given super soldier serums or been bitten by radioactive spiders. They are in our workplaces, at our universities, walking past us in the streets. They have the mild mannered personas of a lawyer and father of four, a film student, or a wine salesman. When given the signal, they don olive green uniforms, and abandon their lives to fight against cultish terrorist organizations.
What inspires Israelis is not dictated by the whims of Disney’s political correctness or Marvel’s ironic cowardice, but by the actions of heroes like Arnon Zamora, the Counterterrorism Unit commando Chief Inspector who gave his life to rescue the Hamas hostages Shlomi Ziv, Andrey Kozlov, Almog Meir, and Noa Argamani on June 8. Israelis don’t need others to depict them as heroes when its is Lior Levi, a MDA paramedic who treated the October 7 wounded while under gunfire that best represents the nation. It is people like Bedouin gas station attendant Masad Armilat, who rushed out to rescue wounded victims and outwit Hamas terrorists, that show that anyone can be a hero.
Israelis and Jews would undoubtedly enjoy seeing an Israeli superhero on the big screen, but they do not need Marvel or Disney representation to inspire them to heroism. However, perhaps Marvel Studios should take notes from Israel to ensure that it successfully depicts valor — the country is full of super heroes. Excelsior.