It wasn’t an oven, it was a microwave, and it wasn’t Hamas, it was the Flash. And he was saving that baby.

The internet has this way with categorizing people into only two extremes with nothing in between. This particular conflict is a minefield. Thats why I’ve stopped commenting on it mostly and just say “killing people is bad no matter who you are”

“Worldwide, the Nicaraguan Contras...”

Even Israeli journalists and the IDF debunked that claim. It’s a hijacking of a witness account of a Palestinian baby being put in an oven by Zionist soldiers during the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, but with the participants reversed.

If you’re just asking about the Middle East, Al-Qaeda and Nour al-Din al-Zenki (and other Syrian rebel groups) are pretty clear examples. Worldwide, the Nicaraguan Contras and the Kosovo Liberation Army off the top of my head.

Yeah, I also see this as a problem, being pushed from both sides. Racists want to conflate Jews with Israel so they can point to the actions of war criminals like Netanyahu and his government and say “see, Jews are bad”. On the other side, Israeli nationalists also want to conflate Jews with Israel so they can claim…

What doesn’t help is that there’s Israeli interests who explicitly WANT this confusion to exist because it helps their geopolitical interests.

(As well as evangelical death cult interests in the US who want this confusion to exist because System Requirement for their doomsday prophecies, but that’s a whole other thing)

I mean they trained/sponsored Al-Qaeda until the Gulf War.

The argument of “it’s not genocide because their population is growing” is how people talk about livestock. The poultry maintains a population of billions of chickens worldwide, more than the human population. It also slaughters them in the billions.

You seem to be conceding Kalassynikoff’s point — that you were incorrect in suggesting there are video games where you kill Arabs solely because they are Arab. But you didn’t want to say so, so instead you made a little dig about Israel that I’m sure was a big hit in your college seminar.

Israel

It’s easy to be snarky here but I agree with the larger point. Arab people are seldom treated with empathy in AAA shooters. That’s the point the interviewee was trying to get across. Indie games are taking huge strides in that direction, though, and I hope that this trend reaches the mainstream at some point.

Oh come on. I am not a call of duty fan but nowhere does it say shoot the arab cause he is an arab. There are plenty of civilians you aren’t supposed to kill in those games. You are just trying to get a rise like using a bad clickbait headline.

Found the genocide apologist

i mean....Far Cry 5 was exactly that.

Considering that there has damn near been continuous war in the middle east for the past 40 years and America has been involved in most of them it is not surprising. If we were off fighting in Vietnam again you would see more games there. These games thrive off of the idea that they are realistic combat simulators so…

Thank you for writing this article. The dissociation and insistence on distraction or making little points to try and dismiss the heart of this - the heartbreak of this - are telling of how deeply seeded these views are. I appreciate your bringing them to light.

There are no heroes in this conflict, only villains (Hamas and the government of Israel) and victims (Palestinians, and to a lesser extent Israelis).

There is an actual definition of genocide and what Israel is currently doing absolutely meets that definition. It does not require the complete elimination of an ethnic group. The hallmark of genocide is the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a ethnic, religious or other group. Israeli leaders at all levels have…

But if you want to hurt somebody else in the game, assuming it’s not a Nazi, or a Russian, or a South American, you need a justification. You can’t shoot an American. That is bad.