The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, calls for intensified pressure on Disney and Disney-owned Marvel Studios for their complicity in whitewashing Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and its underlying regime of settler-colonial apartheid. Until the company permanently drops the racist, anti-Palestinian character Ruth Bat-Seraph (aka Sabra) from the Marvel universe, Palestinians call for the consumer boycott of Disney+ subscriptions and all Marvel merchandise.
Glorifying genocidal Israel
Originally created in 1980 as a “super heroine of the state of Israel” and an agent of apartheid Israel’s secret service, the Sabra character has long glorified setter-colonial violence against Palestinians. Many months into Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and as its global standing was nosediving, Marvel continued with its shameful decision to revive the character for 2025’s Captain America: Brave New World, casting an actor who volunteered for the Israeli military despite being exempted. The Israeli actor has narrated official Israeli regime genocide propaganda – willingly enabling the dehumanization and racism that Palestinian filmmakers have decried.
The same year, Disney released Snow White starring Israeli cultural ambassador Gal Gadot, who hosted Hollywood screenings of an official Israeli military propaganda film that attempted to justify the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Despite thousands of film workers—including hundreds of leading Hollywood figures—pledging to refuse work with complicit Israeli film companies and institutions later that year, Disney has still taken no accountability for its track record of promoting Israel’s cultural ambassadors during its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has ranked dead last among 50 countries in the latest Nations Brand Index, while the Chairman of the Israel Export Institute admitted that “BDS and boycotts have changed Israel’s global trade landscape.” Seen by the global majority as a genocidal rogue state, Israel has desperately sought propaganda help from its lobby groups and anti-Palestinian allies in businesses in the US and beyond to rehabilitate its image. Disney’s shameless attempt at that is as transparent as it is deplorable.
Disney+ has also significantly raised its prices again, while laying off almost two thousand workers this year alone, providing conscientious consumers with more reasons to boycott its subscriptions.
Additional complicity
Following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Disney was the first major Hollywood studio to pause theatrical releases in Russia. Shortly thereafter, the company suspended all business in the country citing “the unrelenting assault on Ukraine and the escalating humanitarian crisis.”
However, as Israel continues to wage its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, escalate its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and expand its criminal military aggression to the wider region, Disney maintains extensive business in apartheid Israel. This colonial hypocrisy even includes its own Israeli subsidiary The Walt Disney Company Israel Ltd, streamer Disney+’s expansion into the Israeli market, and two dedicated Israeli television channels—Disney Channel Israel and Disney Junior Israel.
These two channels are available via the deeply complicit Israeli networks HOT and Yes. Hot Telecommunications Systems Ltd is listed in the UN database of companies involved in illegal settlement business, as is Bezeq, which owns Yes (aka DBS Satellite Services). Both companies are involved in Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank—a war crime under international law.
Additionally, the Walt Disney Company’s two largest institutional investors are The Vanguard Group Inc and BlackRock Inc. Both companies are named in a recent UN report for their significant investments in corporations complicit in Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid and genocide—including Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and Caterpillar, among many others.
BDS victories
The Los Angeles premiere of Captain America: Brave New World was met with protests, which forced Marvel to cancel a live stream of the event. Strategic grassroots pressure contributed to what has widely been considered a flop—the film suffered a massive 68% drop in its second weekend, became one of Marvel’s lowest grossing films of all time, and likely did not recoup its full budget, according to industry analysts.
Snow White featuring Israel’s cultural ambassador Gal Gadot resulted in an enormous $170 million loss for Disney and led the company to reassess its “live action remake” strategy—even pausing the development of some projects indefinitely. Grassroots campaigns in the Arab region led to nearly empty theaters in Egypt. In Jordan, the film failed to be distributed at all. Snow White was also pulled from theaters in Kuwait, Lebanon, and Oman. Gadot herself admittedthat growing opposition in Hollywood to Israel’s actions “greatly affected” the film’s success.
Other recent BDS victories suggest that complicity is also bad for business. A fan-led campaign boycotting Scream 7, whose producers fired star Melissa Barrera for speaking out against Israel’s genocide, contributed to a 74% drop in that film’s second weekend box office—the franchise’s worst. Streamer Mubi lost over 200,000 subscribers after the company accepted $100 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, a firm which invests directly in complicit Israeli military companies.
How we win
Other major streaming services, including Apple TV, Netflix, Paramount+, and Prime Video, continue to launder Israel’s image and whitewash its atrocity crimes. By focusing our collective efforts on Disney+, whose complicity runs deep, and raising winnable demands, we can make a material impact and send a strong message to all streamers to end their complicity.
Until Disney commits to dropping Sabra, hit unsubscribe from genocide and apartheid.