Don’t boycott ‘Captain America’ because Shira Haas is in it

It’s nonsense to reject a film because its 7th lead is from Israel

I could have sworn the problem was that Ruth Bat-Seraph wasn’t Israeli enough.

Before seeing Captain America: Brave New World last Tuesday night, I sort of vaguely remembered a kerfuffle, at some point over a year ago, about the casting of Shira Haas, an Israeli actress best known in the U.S. for the Netflix series Unorthodox.

Haas was cast as Ruth Bat-Seraph, an established Marvel comic book character whose alter ego is Sabra, an Israeli superhero with a background in the Mossad. The comic book version of the character was, I gather, conceived as an Israeli counterpart of Captain America. However, in the history of the MCU, comic book backstories of characters have often not exactly carried over into the movies.

Marvel had announced last summer that the Sabra character, in the movie, would have a different backstory: She’s now a “high-ranking government official” in the United States.

This drew some backlash, with the American Jewish Committee chiding Marvel for its "decision to strip the Israeli identity of Sabra is a betrayal of the character's creators and fans and a capitulation to intimidation. Sabra is a proud Israeli hero and should be portrayed as such. Taking away such a central part of her identity would be like making Captain America Canadian.”

So I was surprised to come out of the movie to discover that the Hollywood premiere, held at the same time as my screening, was hit with protests. Not from the pro-Israel side upset about the de-Israelification of the character, but rather from anti-Israel protestors upset that the film had included an Israeli performer at all.

Per Variety, “several dozen” protesters appeared at the premiere, holding up signs that read “Sabra has got to go,” “Disney supports genocide,” “Boycott ‘Captain America'” and “Pray 4 Princess Jasmine.” This led to a scuttling of a planned livestream of the premiere.

This is ridiculous for a few reasons. First of all, it appears both denunciations of the character and actor, from the pro- and anti-Zionist sides, have come from people who have not seen the film. Because if they had, they would know that Haas-as-Sabra is a very small role, probably the 6th or 7th-most prominent in the film. It’s nothing at all like Israeli actress’ Gal Gadot’s multi-year run as Wonder Woman.

At risk of spoiling things slightly- Ruth Bat-Seraph is established as a government agent working in the White House, directly for the president of the United States (Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus Ross.) There’s one line of dialogue establishing that the character is Israeli, before she went into the Black Widow program and ultimately came to the U.S.