The Parable of Marvel’s X-men’s mutant Israel

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It is safe to say that the 7 months of continuously horrific death-toll of Israel-Gaza war’s has sparked a cultural war of its own in the Israel-backing USA between the Pro-Palestinian side and Pro-Israelis Zionist side. Pro-Palestine protesters have flooded cities and university campuses demanding an immediate cease-fire, accountability for what they view as Israeli war-crimes and decrying Zionism as a fundamentally western ethno-supremacist ideology. In turn, the pro-Israel supporters, both in the general public and the US congress, have accused those protesters of being antisemitic and claimed that the protests are proof of Anti-Israel academics breeding of antisemitism on college campuses. This led to congressional hearings that claimed the heads of a couple of university presidents who were subjected with almost impossible hypotheticals to prove their anti-Israel bias, which in turn became the pretext for the blatantly Islamophobic confirmation hearing for Adeel Mangi, the first Muslim American appeals court judge judicial nominees. Interestingly, neither side seem to have noticed the parable of mutant Israel that has been the “Age of Krakoa” storyline in the Marvel X-men comics, which upon closer inspection raises the question: What the hell is Marvel’s X-men trying to say about Israel and its future exactly?

For those somehow unfamiliar with the IP, the X-Men were created in the 60’s by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, both Jewish, as a metaphor for the American civil-rights movement. The X-men stories always revolved around the persecuted minority of the “mutants” who were hated for being (and looking) “different”, as well as their ability to achieve feats beyond the ability of the “non-mutants”, thanks to the X gene that marks them a separate species, the “homo-superior”. The struggle is usually between the “peaceful” mutants aiming for equality and co-existence who are led by the mutant British professor Charles Xavier, the mutants “Martin Luther King” if you will, while the “Malcom X” figure played by German mutant supremacist Magneto, followed by the “militant” mutants who were radicalized by decades of human bigotry and persecution, and believe in violent resistance and find Xavier’s “co-existence dream” delusional. Their fights were usually intercut with humans trying to genocide the mutants, “cure them” or keep them oppressed.

In the 70’s the X-men comics were revitalized by Jewish writer, Claire Claremont, who wrote X-Men comics from 1975 to 1991. Claremont spent a part of 1970’s in an Israeli Kibbutz, where he met Holocaust Survivors, and his work was greatly influenced by the experience. It was Claremont in Uncanny X-Men #150 who made Magneto a Holocaust survivor, turning him from a genocidal villain into a troubled, complicated anti-hero and leader. Claremont has famously stated that Magneto’s character journey was meant to parallel Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who ran an Irgun terrorist cell in the 1930’s and 1940’s against the British, and ended up as an elder statemen signing the Camp David peace agreement with Egypt and winning the Nobel peace prize.

It is worth noting that despite all the creative influence of the X-men’s Jewish writers and creators, having the mutant struggle echo or parallel the Jewish or Israeli struggle was never a creative direction of the comics storyline, probably due to the image of post-Israel Jewish strength. The Mutants remained a stand-in for whatever persecuted minority seeking equal rights at the time, which in 90’s and the 2000’s became gay and queer rights. It wasn’t until Jonathan Hickman came along in 2019 with the intention of revitalizing the X-Men storyline by the age of Krakoa with the question “what if all the mutants, with all of their world-shaking powers, united and created a homeland for mutants only?” that this parallel came into focus.

The Creation of Krakoa

Charles Xavier, the British son of privilege, joined forces with American mutant scientist Moira McTaggart and the German holocaust survivor Magneto as the founding fathers of a nation exclusively for mutants in the sentient mutant Island of Krakoa, a piece of land they have historical ties to. The Brit, the American and the German founders started selecting the members of Krakoa’s first ruling council, who ended up almost exclusively western in origin, with the exception of “Apocalypse”, who is of Egyptian origin, and Storm, whose mom was Kenyan, and father was American (and who was orphaned by her parents getting killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict). The newly united mutants discovered quickly that their exercise in nation building is actually no small feat. Like all new nations, Krakoa needed a creation myth and rules. However, the foundation of the mutant nation of Krakoa paralleled that State of Israel to such a plagiaristic degree that they raised the eyebrows of intrigued readers immediately. The symbolism of the nation’s founders aside, initially there were 6 areas of stark similarities if one replaces the words “Jewish” with “mutant.

Homeland & National Identity: Krakoa is a safe homeland for an infamous minority group that has been the target of racists and bigots all over the world, who fear-monger against them and blame them for crimes and misfortunes they had no hand in causing. The vicious persecution they face until this day comes from the perception of their inherited “special abilities”, which has led some governments to try to wipe them out, with those who are “not passing” targeted first. Krakoa offers all mutants the promise of safety, acceptance, and the freedom to live openly, regardless of how “passing” they are.

UN recognition & geopolitical relationships: Fearing becoming a targeted nation of pariahs’,Krakoa’s leaders placed paramount importance on having their nation recognized as a fully sovereign nation by the United Nations. Their strategy hinged on developing technological advancements that form the basis for transactional relationships of mutual benefit with other nations for mutual state recognition. In this case it was drugs that extend human life, and prevent the most common diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and cancer. By offering to sell those drugs only nations that recognized them, the United Nations voted quickly to give the new nation international recognition.

Birthright: every Mutant was a citizen of Krakoa by “birth-right”, and is welcome to settle there immediately, where the new settlers receive both free housing and healthcare.

Militarized society: Given the world hatred and persecution of mutants, Krakoa is always under existential threat. Therefore, all mutants who live in Krakoa are expected to fight for Krakoa if they were called, an expected “sacrifice” to protect their homeland and safety. Thus, the children of Krakoa are enrolled in a “War College”, where they must hone their fighting and war skills against their nation’s enemies, like the IDF.

Unique Language as the path to culture: Krakoa created a unique mutant language that only they can understand, because as Magneto put it “you can’t create a unique culture without your own language”. This sentiment echoes the arguments of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who led the revival of spoken Hebrew as the official language of Israel.

“No More”: A mutant slogan and rallying cry signifying the newly mutant nation’s refusal to undergo another attempted genocide of their people. It echoes the real-life Warsaw Ghetto uprising slogan of “Never Again.”

If the previous similarities weren’t enough, Magneto chose to relay those tenets and conditions to humanity’s representatives in a meeting they had in Jerusalem. Given his status as the founder of the nation the unnegotiable nature of those conditions were incendiary, but not nearly as problematic as what he says to the leaders of Humanity in Davos.

The World Economic Forum, alarmed by the multiple global (political, social, technological, economic) disruptions Krakoa’s emergence had caused, invited the mutant nation’s leaders to a “free and fair discussion while breaking bread” with political representatives, business moguls and academics. Magneto, who was part of the delegation that accepted the invitation, emphatically denied that a war between mutants and humans was inevitable, since mutants intend to use the same global capitalist systems, the one the human world leaders use to control their people, to ensure such a war never happens. His first step is offering the humans a better life and longer healthier existence if they were willing to pay for them, and then using those revenues to systematically control Humanity’s levers of power, thus ensuring their compliance:

“We will buy your banks, we will buy your schools, we will buy your media, we will buy your politicians and then when we have bought all the rest we will buy you because you have taught us that everything has a price, and we are happy to pay. Then when we have this influence we will use it will make sure that the wrong sorts of people, and you know who, no longer have any economic power. We will not allow them inside our institutions because it’s important they do not have anywhere peddle they’re dangerous, outdated ideas. And that is how it will end like a fire with no oxygen. Yes, of course, there will still be people who fear and hate us. They just simply won’t be able to do anything about it any longer. So, as I said, there will be no war.”

While Magneto’s words are supposed to echo the actions of the White supremacist systems of Power, without that context they unnervingly sound like the ramblings of the “the international Jewish conspiracy” nut-jobs. That speech is a rendition of the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’s” biggest hits, which was created by White supremacists who aimed to malign the Jews by accusing them of doing what the white supremacist order is doing themselves until this day. However, having that “Elders of Zion” speech publicly performed to world leaders by the most prominent Jewish leader of “Mutant Israel”, a few days after the nation was founded, is problematic to say the last. Unfortunately, once you accept the premise of Krakoa/Israel analogy, it only gets worse from here.

Reign of the Oppressed

During Krakoa’s early days, when non-mutant characters of the marvel universe on multiple occasions expressed their concern or reservation about Krakoa’s actions to their mutant friends and allies, the conversation never went well. Their words were usually met with moral indignation from their mutant friends, a list of current and historical violent anti-mutant grievances that included two genocides in the past decade alone, and at times accusatory questions as to where those concerned non-mutant heroes were during those horrible events. They would state that the mutant nation of Krakoa is the inevitable reaction to human hate and anti-mutant bias, and that such criticisms are fueled by that same’s world’s discomfort with the sudden public projection of mutant unity and power after decades of oppressing them.

Additionally, the mutants seemed to conflate their genetic superiority to humans with moral superiority, claiming that hate and oppression are hallmarks of human cultural values, which the evolved mutants not only don’t share, but look down upon. Magneto even reminds a concerned human diplomat that the history of mutantdom is being the oppressed and not the oppressors, and the mutants’ “real advantage” is not their power, but that they “never conquered a people, stole their land or made slaves of the vanquished”.

A powerful argument and statement that come with two minor caveats: 1) the argument that a people who were historically oppressed cannot become oppressors or imperialists themselves one day is a logical fallacy: history has taught us that the right mix of opportunity and circumstance to turn any hero into a monster; and 2) the morally evolved mutant nation of Krakoa ended up doing all of those things, and on more than one occasion, on the hands of Krakoa’s Mossad equivalent, known as X-Force.

Keeping the Nation safe

As a reaction to a terrorist attack on Krakoa by human supremacists, X-Force, a Krakoan intelligence agency/ Black Op’s team”, was created with a special jurisdiction, no oversight, and sanctioned to employ lethal force to counter threats against the nation. X-Force was led by Hank “Beast” McCoy, whose “superior intelligence” led him to the conclusion that to protect Krakoa against all threats and at all costs, he should proactively pre-empt those threats before they materialize, a strategy that inevitably led to horrific actions, consequences, and war crimes, including genocide.

When the son of the President of the South American nation of Terra Verde developed a plant-based “telefloronic” technology that could economically threaten Krakoa’s own plant-based technology, X-force left him brain-dead, and his “telefloronic” technology “modified” by Krakoan science. The modified strain ended up causing the genocide all the citizens of Terra Verde’s capital. Seeing the genocide that he caused as a threat against Krakoa’s reputation, McCoy covered it up by using another modified strain of “telefloronics” to mind-control and puppet Terra Verdeans, which also back-fired, exposing to everyone Beast’s crimes and causing such a scandal that Krakoa was forced to pay reparations to Terra Verde. McCoy kept his job and faced no consequences from the nation’s leaders for his actions, since they were done with the intention of protecting Krakoa’s “national security”, effectively emboldening him on his path.

After getting away with genocide, McCoy tried to create a Krakoan analog to ICE, one that interned any Russian Mutants on Krakoa, and he tortured some of them. He then plotted the assassination of a US army general who is politically opposed to the existence of Krakoa by using a mind-controlled assassin, and claiming publicly that it is a “US deep state” plot to tarnish “Krakoa”. Last but not least, McCoy went full Joseph Engels and built a Black-site secret Prison in space and filled it with alien, human and mutant “prisoners” whom he abducted and imprisoned with no crime or trial, and then proceeded to conduct deadly genetic experiments on them for Krakoa’s weapons testing. McCoy’s reprehensible actions do not illicit any remorse or regret in him since they were all motivated by his goal of maintaining mutant supremacy and protecting the mutant nation at any cost.

If you are wondering how the writers can justify the continued “hero” status of the mutants after they did all of this, the arguments range from “their personal persecution history is to blame”, to “this is what it takes to establish the strength of a new nation”, “many of the moral mutant characters voiced their concern and opposition with Krakoa’s direction”, finally ending with “What they did was messed up but they had good intentions, not to mention the other guys are always worse”. However, those excuses hid a lot of foreshadowing in regard to the price of mutant hubris, and how Krakoa’s downfall was inevitable due to its mounting sins.

Needless to say, those crimes and actions only increased the fears and suspicions of the general human population, as well as their sense of helplessness against those “new gods”. This led to the rising anti-mutant sentiment world-wide and a wider support for anti-mutant terrorist organization “Orchis”, who were now seen as the champions of human race and the only real resistance to the “criminal mutant supremacist nation” of Krakoa. Whatever sympathy the mutants had amongst the human population eroded, since it’s easy to root for the victims but not the powerful

It is worth noting that since its inception, the “Krakoa is Israel” theory sparked a lot of debate between X-men readers, with its detractors pointing to two main differences between the two ethno-states: 1) the mutants didn’t have to set up their nation on Krakoa by force, since Krakoa- a mutant sentient island- was not claimed by mutants based on historic right, but rather the Island consented to the mutants moving there, and 2) Unlike Israel, the Island of Krakoa had no indigenous population (let alone an Arab or Bedouin population) living there before the mutants moved there. As Magneto put it in the beginning of the Krakoan era: “Krakoa is ours and ours alone”. With the absence of a displaced indigenous population, the Israel analogy doesn’t line up; as one Reddit poster summed it up: “Krakoa is Israel if Israel wasn’t problematic”. Well, that was true, until the Arabs.. I mean Arrakis’s showed up.

Along came the Akkaba Clan

One day, the mutants of Krakoa ended up discovering that thousands of years ago Krakoa was once part of a larger Island called Okkara, which housed millions of mutants led by the “Akkaba Clan”, a family of powerful mutants who come from Akkaba in Jordan and dress in Pharaonic Egyptian aesthetic. Those mutants, in an attempt to protect Earth from a dimensional invasion, ended up splitting the Island of Okkara into two islands: The Island of Arrako which had the Akkaba clan and the millions of Mutants they led displaced and locked up in an alternate hellish dimension, and the other Island remained on Earth and became Krakoa. However, those original inhabitants, called the Arraki, were fueled by the dream of one day of returning to Earth and re-uniting “the broken lands” of Arrako and Krakoa.

The Arraki mutants were a different breed to the Krakoan mutant cousins: raised in warrior culture with their own unique belief system, not afraid of a life that ends, they were tough, battle-tested brutal fighters, hardened by hundreds of years of war and conflict in that dimension, and they outnumbered the Krakoans by millions. They were marching under the banner of “the forces of annihilation” on Krakoa because they wanted their Island back and the defeat and expulsion of all of Krakoa’s mutants.

While Krakoa’s mutants ended up defeating the Arrakis, they accepted co-existence and the reunification of both Islands alongside their people. However, the “one-land” solution didn’t work out, because upon the reunification of the Arrako and Krakoa islands, both Islands realized that they’ve grown too different to ever be reunited into one land again. Additionally, Mutant/Arraki co-existence was not going well due to their “cultural differences”. The Arrakis, who just endured thousand years of occupation and endless war, were not civilized enough in the eyes of Krakoa’s leaders to continue having them around.

The Krakoan mutants’ solution to this was to claim Mars as theirs, terraforming it and transferring the millions of Arraki mutants there for a “two-planet solution”. The Arrakis were told by the Krakoans that they can live there as they please and have self-governance, but the local government ended up being led by the Krakoa Mutant Storm, who killed the previous leader, to keep them in check during the “transitional phase”.

Once settled on their new planet without a war, Earth mutants were quick to discover that the Arrakis were not the one-dimensional warmongers the Krakoa’s believed them to be. They were open, generous, talked about their pain, and were capable of great beauty and art. While they were encouraged by their ruling Regent from Krakoa “Storm” to fundamentally change their culture and enjoy peace the Krakoan way, it was Krakoa that brought decimation to the Arrakis.

Thanks to their “association” with Krakoa and their increasing list of enemies, the Arrakis ended up brutally attacked by one of them who wiped the supreme majority of their population in an hour. This decimation led the Akkaba clan’s return to Arrako, claim that this calamity is due to their people going soft on the behest of “their foreign ruler” Storm, and then ousted of her from power. Storm chose not to abdicate her rule, claiming to be Arraki after living amongst them as their foreign leader for a year, and started a devastating civil war that claimed even more Arraki lives.

Meanwhile, the humans’ powerlessness in front of the mounting evidence of mutant ascendency and Humanity’s obsolescence, and the increasingly public knowledge of the actions and crimes of Krakoa, has bred a huge amount of anti-mutant resentment that it reached a middle ground with anti-mutant bigotry. Humanity openly celebrated every time a challenger to the mutants presented themselves in public as “the one to end them”, allowing Orchis was amassing more allies and power for their final strike against the mutants. With rising enemies, and dwindling sympathy and support, the fall of Krakoa was near.

The Fall of Krakoa:

Orchis, empowered with public support based on real and fictional mutant crimes, immediately started hunting and rounding up any remaining mutants into Gulags where they were tortured. In turn, the remaining Mutants on Earth stayed with the mission of brutally killing any and all Orchis human members; The destruction of mutant dream had a price to be exacted in human blood, righteously now, since the mutants are the human-persecuted maligned minority once again.

With the mutant state destroyed and disbanded, the island itself literally ascends to the heavens, ending the age of Krakoa. Regardless, the age of Krakoa was over, with Marvel’s solution to the “Krakoa mutants’ problem” was the annihilation of their state, planetary deportation of their supreme majority, and forced displacement of the remaining mutants on Earth. With them returning to live in a world that continues to construct a culture of hatred against them. In other words, the status quo is restored.

What is marvel trying to say about Israel?

With the Krakoan age at its end, as a reader I have struggled with the meaning of this Parable of Mutant Israel. What is the lesson here? Is it a cautionary tale? Is it saying that the fall of Israel is inevitable and that the only way to achieve that is through violence and forced displacement? Is it suggesting that the only way for the Israeli population to redeem themselves is by becoming a persecuted minority? Or was it all a case of lazy writing, with the Israel analogy being plagarized for the sake of worldbuilding, coupled with haphazard stories or plot points that, when combined coincidently with the need for a status reset, led to this end result?

I’m not one to judge intentions, nor am I qualified to decide what a Jewish person should view as an attack or incitement. I’m however familiar with Hickman ‘s work, and I’m very doubtful that his intentions were antisemitic in essence or that he advocates for the destruction of Israel and the displacement of all of its Jewish citizens. Please note that Jonathan Hickman ‘s work on that storyline ended right after the introductions of the Arraki; Everything that happened after that was not under his creative control or direction. This includes the assassinations, the Gulag, the deadly illegal experiments, and the “final solution” for Krakoa and the ultimate fate of the mutants.

Interestingly, while the Krakoa/Israel analogy was a huge part of the debate when the storyline launched, it is now suspiciously absent from the commentary discussing the end of the Krakoan era of X-men. I’m not one to judge intentions, nor am I qualified to decide what a Jewish person should view as an attack or incitement, but given the current context, would the destruction of the state of Krakoa be considered antisemitic in today’s media environment? What’s obvious is that Israel’s inclusion is both a homage and a critique, one where he explores how noble intentions when coupled with unchecked power could leads to slow corruption and villainy, if not eventual self-destruction.

The Krakoan age ended with Orchis executing a sudden and violent attack on Krakoa as its leaders celebrated their nation in their third annual “Hellfire Gala”, an opulent event where world-leaders, famous humans and dignitaries were invited. At the peak of their festivities, Orchis launched a devastating attack from Orbit that killed all the most powerful Mutants very quickly, and all remaining citizens were given the choice to be either exiled from earth or stay and face being hunted for their crimes. Xavier, in his desire to save the Mutants, forced them all to depart, leaving the island empty and under Orchis control.

The parable of Krakoa is really a Greek tragedy, one that mirrors the promise of Israel when it was first founded (as a leftist egalitarian nation that even the Egyptian Communist Party supported publicly at its inception) and what it has become over time. Hickman intended to write a story about the effect of persecution and victimization on a group, which leads them to adopt a mindset of “segregation for safety” and cheer displays of overwhelming strength against their enemies — a story about the leaders of such minority groups, their determination to keep their people safe and the horrific price that they are willing to impose on themselves and others in pursuit of that goal. In certain light, one could even argue that the entire Krakoa storyline is sympathetic to the “good intentions” behind the morally compromised and security-minded thinking that the leaders of a country like Israel must engage in, even if he ultimately agrees that it’s wrong and futile.

Hickman clearly empathizes with the founding fathers who created Israel and appreciates why they acted the way they did in its early years — their “good intentions” coupled with a “realistic worldview” concerning the dangers facing them — as well as then depicting the actions stemming from that worldview as leading down a slow path to destruction. The Krakoan state has its origins in persecution and almost near-erasure of its people. Like Krakoa, Israel is a nation born out of desperation, whose purpose is to gather, shelter and protect its people by whatever means necessary, from a world that hates them for being different or better. So it is built as a fortress, a militarized society that uses this historic persecution as fuel for its convictions regarding the morality of its actions, and immediately becomes obsessed with displays of strength and the projection of power. Ironically, those same displays of strength end up inviting challenge and escalation from their enemies and victims, garnering fear and hatred toward them from the general public and eventually creating vicious never-ending cycles of violence.

In the end, the mutant state of Krakoa only lasted 4 years before it ended, so maybe with time a course-correction was possible. In contrast, Israel’s 70+ years have only hardened the segregationist and isolationists amongst its people, killing Palestinians in Ghaza, and kicking out Palestinian families in the West Bank to settle new Israelis. His sympathies aside, Hickman is suggesting that despite its initial appeal and positive effects on its population, Krakoa is the wrong solution to a very real problem. He argues that taking that route always leads to the exact opposite of its intent, that when you openly oppose the world, the world pushes back even more. It also means that everyone who belongs to, supports or is affiliated with that state, but who lives elsewhere in the world, ends up having to deal with the brunt of the anger and hatred this state’s actions evoke, whether in words or acts of violence.

His sympathies aside, Hickman also seems to suggest that a state born of a desire for security — a militarized society, segregated, focused on strength, always placed in the crosshairs of attacks and a target of hatred due to the actions of its leaders — is at worst a fundamentally broken state and at best resembles a prison for its people, who spend every day of their lives with the existential fear of being attacked and wiped out, with any survivors displaced and most of the world cheering on. Hickman shows us that such a society will eventually require villains to keep it safe and view killers as necessary for its survival, if one can call that surviving. And once you sign up as one of its citizens, you are trapped. You are locked into this dynamic, for better or worse, until the bitter end, or worse, forever.

The reason I believe this, is Hickman’s finale passage in Inferno, his final Krakoa story:

“We made a thing. An act of pure creation. An act of desperation, to once and for all, save our people. All of them. The nation’s founders, the hopeful, the trustworthy, the innocent children of broken keepers, the heroes, the villains, the killers and liars, and true believers. A place built on hope, paid in full, and able to withstand any force that would rise against it. We built the walls high, and locked ourselves in. Forever.”