Virtual intifada is conquering the world

Everyday life has found its place in the virtual world. The conflict between Palestine and Israel is not an exception in this respect: the real war found its continuation in cyberspace. Arab and Israeli hackers hack each other’s sites, there are tons of discrediting material on the net and so long and so forth. The virtual world is not sitting on its hands, it is developing very quickly. The affect on its audience is getting keener.

The BBC informed that Arab fans of computer games can imagine themselves a Palestinian young man during the first months of the intifada. It starts with the scene, when a Palestinian teenager named Ahmad throws stones in Israeli soldiers. The guy grows up, he becomes a real warrior against Zionists (Israelis), shooting people around and tearing the Israeli flag into pieces. Then he saves wounded Palestinians and at the end of the day he joins guerrillas in the south of Lebanon. The BBC mentioned that if Ahmad starts shooting civilians, then the game was over. The final victory over the enemy is not stipulated either.

A spokesmen for the company, which produced the game, said that the game was the continuation of the history: “We have not found the way to settle the conflict down, so there is no final victory in the game either.”

Israelis cannot boast of something like that, but time will show. But they understood it very quickly across the ocean that computer games could be a very good way for American lifestyle propaganda. The American army will soon produce two free games, which are going to be used for that purpose among young American people.

Pentagon’s new propaganda idea – the free series of America’s Army computer games was presented at the major world exhibition of electronics Electronic Entertainment Expo. The American army has been constantly working on its image since the time of the Vietnam war. They used to fund movies about the army - Soldier Jane, for example, but now Americans use the methods of the twenty-first century.

The game consists of two parts – “Operations” and “Soldier” CDs. In the "Army Operations" portion of the game, players can enter any of 20 infantry-squad-related scenarios, said "Operations"-CD producer Professor Michael Capps. In the "Soldiers" CD, players choose one of four existing soldiers as their game piece or create their own soldier. Capps said that military men insisted on real-life imagery of weapons, despite the fact that it made the project more expensive.

Dmitry Chirkin PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov