while a genocide is being perpetrated by Israel at this very moment, how tone-deaf and insane it is to publish something like this, a game where you (can only) play as Zionists during the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, which features game text characterizing Arabs as violent and unreasonable and in which the author refuses to refer to Palestinians directly, erasing their very existence off their own land in a manner so appropriate to Zionist thinking
truly disgusting
to clarify, a roleplaying exercise where you take the role of a genocidaire, ethnic cleanser, ethnonationalist—such as the architects of apartheid this game would have you play as—now that is perhaps a compelling idea to create a game around, with enough care and criticality a game like that could MAYBE be designed, but this is not that game, a game in which the game text reproduces the systems of exclusion and violence which characterize Israel
this is a game which reproduces inequalities by it's very structure, which engages with none of its historical context critically, and which erases a genocide (the Nakba) and erases a people (Palestinians) while a second genocide against those people is underway—this is detestable, poor, shameful history-writing and stands as an even worse pedagogical tool
