Well, to be entirely honest 2 out of 3 of these are no big deal. I think the six days war should be off limits to this kind of thing for the same reason I am against playable Taliban, or a game glorifying the current drug wars in Juarez. It's too recent (relatively) and too important in people's minds. The other games are no worse than any other historical wartime scenario involving Rome or whatever. Heck, I've lead Arabic armies through historical-themed campaigns of conquest and warfare, so why not deal with some semitic ones?
I'll also be honest in saying that I don't blame Isreal for going here given who they are surrounded by, and the way the Muslim world has been using propaganda in recent years. A lot of people like to try and present the aggression towards Isreal, and problems with the rest of the world as the results of a radical fringe, but that's hardly the case when you look at the media, accepted pop culture, and coordinated and accepted society-wide indoctrination going on. I've posted links to Arabic children's programming before, but just for an off the cuff example, let's take the "worst" of those video games, dealing with the six days war and compare it to:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1497.htm
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88076
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123162
This is only a small sampling, if you do some research into Muslim television, and just search with a few key words about muslim violence, children, and television you'll find tons of stuff from all over the region. I chose these because they by and large involve Isreal. Understand that for all attempts to portray groups like HAMAS as some tiny, lunatic fringe, they actually do speak for the majority of people in Palaestine and run most of the media including children's programming. If you look, you'll find that the same can be said for the rest of the region accross pretty much all of the nations, with various anti-Isreali and anti-Western themes,combined with cries for Jihad and world conquest and xenocids of all non-Muslims.
The point here is that Isreal's worst bit in using a divisive conflict that actually happened, and which it won (and to be fair cultures always want to promote their best moments and victories) as a way of rallying it's people and teaching it's youth. The other side is having kids see their equivilent of Mickey Mouse killed by Jews so they will grow up to hate them, while "Jihad Bee" encourages them to sacrifice themselves for the cause. It sounds like a bad joke, but it isn't.
With this kind of thing going on, you can even argue that a truely paranoid version of "The Six Days War" might not be too out of line, because really... the enviroment they are in is that messed up. Just because your paranoid doesn't mean nobody is out to get you, and in this case it's not exactly subtle. It's just that we out here in countries like the USA are fairly ignorant of the situation since we're kept that way and not exposed to this kind of media, largely because there are substantial political movements that want us to pull out of the region, and like always don't want us to be involved in wars and conflict. It's hard to drum up "OMG think of the children" sympathy and talk about our soldiers killing innocents as a reason to pull out for moral reasons, if you have the public also learning about exactly what we're fighting and seeing what "Jihad Bee" does for the other side.
So basically I think one out of three of those games was probably a bad idea, and they really probably shouldn't have done that, but at the same time I understand why. Unlike some of the things going on in the US with the Juarez game, and the playable Taliban contreversy (no matter what they call them) where the motivation was simple sensationalism, at least Isreal has a sort of valid reason being involved in an active youth propaganda war.
I'll also be honest in saying that I don't blame Isreal for going here given who they are surrounded by, and the way the Muslim world has been using propaganda in recent years. A lot of people like to try and present the aggression towards Isreal, and problems with the rest of the world as the results of a radical fringe, but that's hardly the case when you look at the media, accepted pop culture, and coordinated and accepted society-wide indoctrination going on. I've posted links to Arabic children's programming before, but just for an off the cuff example, let's take the "worst" of those video games, dealing with the six days war and compare it to:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1497.htm
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88076
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123162
This is only a small sampling, if you do some research into Muslim television, and just search with a few key words about muslim violence, children, and television you'll find tons of stuff from all over the region. I chose these because they by and large involve Isreal. Understand that for all attempts to portray groups like HAMAS as some tiny, lunatic fringe, they actually do speak for the majority of people in Palaestine and run most of the media including children's programming. If you look, you'll find that the same can be said for the rest of the region accross pretty much all of the nations, with various anti-Isreali and anti-Western themes,combined with cries for Jihad and world conquest and xenocids of all non-Muslims.
The point here is that Isreal's worst bit in using a divisive conflict that actually happened, and which it won (and to be fair cultures always want to promote their best moments and victories) as a way of rallying it's people and teaching it's youth. The other side is having kids see their equivilent of Mickey Mouse killed by Jews so they will grow up to hate them, while "Jihad Bee" encourages them to sacrifice themselves for the cause. It sounds like a bad joke, but it isn't.
With this kind of thing going on, you can even argue that a truely paranoid version of "The Six Days War" might not be too out of line, because really... the enviroment they are in is that messed up. Just because your paranoid doesn't mean nobody is out to get you, and in this case it's not exactly subtle. It's just that we out here in countries like the USA are fairly ignorant of the situation since we're kept that way and not exposed to this kind of media, largely because there are substantial political movements that want us to pull out of the region, and like always don't want us to be involved in wars and conflict. It's hard to drum up "OMG think of the children" sympathy and talk about our soldiers killing innocents as a reason to pull out for moral reasons, if you have the public also learning about exactly what we're fighting and seeing what "Jihad Bee" does for the other side.
So basically I think one out of three of those games was probably a bad idea, and they really probably shouldn't have done that, but at the same time I understand why. Unlike some of the things going on in the US with the Juarez game, and the playable Taliban contreversy (no matter what they call them) where the motivation was simple sensationalism, at least Isreal has a sort of valid reason being involved in an active youth propaganda war.