Virtual Terrorism

  Truth be told, terrorists don't play pinball these days - the balls were packed into suicide bomb belts as grapeshot. Like everyone else, Islamic radicals have entered the modern age. Taking a lesson from the United States Army, terrorist groups have developed computer action games to teach combat tactics.

  As part of an elaborate propaganda and recruiting campaign, Hezbullah markets a game, entitled Special Force, which simulates attacks on Israeli soldiers and includes a training mode in which players may hone their shooting skills against Israeli officials. The game, a product of Hezbullah's' Central Internet Bureau, took some two years to develop. Each stage of the game was inspired by actual Hezbullah's operations, real-life battles that took place before Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 - even down to the number of Israeli soldiers that players face.

  "Pursue your enemy from position to position. Take part in making victory," says an ad promoting the game on Hezbullah's' al-Manar television.

  Placing players in different stages of Hezbullah's operations against the Jewish state, Special Force incites violence against Jews and spreads anti-Semitism. Potential terrorists are trained to identify and attack Jewish targets. Players experience the same conditions as Hezbullah's terrorists: specific locations, mines, Israeli troops and even weather conditions. Hezbullah intelligence supplies information concerning actual terrorist attacks, geography, forces involved, etc., to add realism to the game.

  A message on the game's box tells users that "the designers of Special Force are very proud to provide you with this special product, which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon." It continues's, "Be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy in the game of force." This is not your average shoot-em-up action game featuring anonymous bad guys, but training for terrorism.

  At least ten thousand copies of Special Force, which Bureau official Mahmoud Rayya calls a "unique gaming experience [for the] trigger-happy," have been sold in Lebanon, it is the hottest selling game in the Shiite areas of Beirut. No one knows how many pirated copies are floating around. It is also available in Syria, Iran, the United Arab Emirates Bahrain, Germany, Australia and Canada. English, French, Arabic and Farsi versions are available online for seven dollars. The game's popularity is an indication of Hezbullah's' success in permeating popular consciousness and in gaining political legitimacy.

  Game design team member Bilal az-Zeyn says that the game’s aim is first of all to entertain, but Zeyn believes that “entertainment is never just entertainment. This game is resisting the Israeli occupation through the media... In a way, Special Force offers a mental and personal training for those who play it, allowing them to feel that they are in the shoes of resistance fighters. It will not be surprising if it leads to a glut of willing young recruits."

  Australian MP Michael Danby has called for the popular game to be banned in his country. "We don't need to encourage suicide bombers or people like that in Australia with things like this ... particularly among vulnerable younger people who have a disposition to these kinds of political views," Mr Danby told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. "We have concerns about active terrorist cells and people being involved in making themselves into human bombs."

Progressively More Difficult Training

 &nbspSpecial Force opens with the image of an exploding Israeli tank. A row of burning Israeli flags marks time while the software loads. “Victory comes from no one but Allah," flashes before a mission begins.

  Players first complete a training course at a war college. They are reminded that, "You must oppose, confront and destroy the machines of the Zionist enemy...." Instruction begins with the use of firearms and grenades. Targets for shooting practice are the heads of prominent Israeli leaders and generals - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Defense Minister Benyamin Ben-Eliezer. Hitting Sharon's forehead scores 10 points.

  The player then must complete a training session to infiltrate and neutralize an Israeli military outpost which requires crossing minefields, neutralizing snipers, avoiding tanks (there are plenty of opportunities for "martyrdom") and learning how to operate automatic weapons. Players are awarded a medal by Hezbullah's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah after completing their cyber training.

  At the next level, they break through an Israeli position in south Lebanon and salute pictures of real-life "martyrs" killed at the same spot. Finally, players fight Israeli troops and blow up helicopters. When Israelis are killed, they yell "you killed me" in Hebrew. Zeyn said the game showed the "integrity of the resistance and fighting the occupation."

  At the end of each round, a table appears with some background information and the most important statistics of the fight as it once took place.

  Internet cafes, like "The Champions" located in the predominantly Shiite Haret Hreik neighborhood of south Beirut, feature the game. The cafe's window is adorned with Hezbullah's' yellow flag, depicting an upraised arm holding a AK-47 aloft, and one of the many posters advertising "Special Force" found in the area. Inside, the decor is combat chic. Bamboo partitions are intended to evoke the Vietnam war. Red sandbags, painted with camouflage designs, line the walls of the dimly lit room and hold several rows of plastic AK-47 Kalashnikovs. Photographs of Sheik Nasrallah and Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sit on a display shelf.

  Ibrahim Tohmaz, 14, firing away on a mission, said he liked the game's realism. "Shooting at Sharon — it was nice to shoot at his head," he said. "He's a bad person."

  Eight-year-old Hussein Osman said he liked Special Force because it features real fighters and "because it kills Israelis. I can be a resistance fighter."

A Syrian Entry

  Special Force is not the only game for budding young terrorists. A Syrian publishing company, Dar al-Fikr, has its own entry - Taht Al Romad (Under Ash) aimed at those 13 and older.

  Under Ash targets In the first level, the "war of stone," Ahmed and other stone-throwing Palestinians battle Israeli troops. In level three, Palestinians storm a Jewish settlement, and the object is to lower the “Israeli” flag, replacing it with the Palestinian flag.

  The next level is a raid on an Israeli arms depot, Ahmed is arrested and taken to Ramla jail. If Ahmed escapes, he can sneak into southern Lebanon where he destroys an Israeli radar and registers a number of "kills." The game ends with chants of "Allah hu Akbar!" to symbolize the need for "Arab solidarity."

  Hasan Salem, executive manager of Dar Al Fikr, told Cairo Times that more than 50,000 copies have been sold, but in a market of half a million, there is much room for growth. "For us, it is not about the money, it is about education. A sequel, Under Siege has been released.

Let's Not Forget the Nazi's

  North American white supremacists, kindred spirits of Islamic terrorists, have their own games. A radio ad, aired on U.S. domestic short-wave, advises that one, Ethnic Cleansing, is "only a game; for now." As a racist web site, where one may buy the game, puts it:

"The most politically incorrect game ever made. Run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics in an attempt to gain entrance to the subway system, where the Jews have hidden to avoid the carnage. Then if YOU'RE lucky... you can blow away Jews as they scream "Oy Vey!", on your way to their command center."

  The game generated a flurry of outraged attention on its release — exactly what the Alliance had been hoping would appeal to disaffected 15- to 25-year-olds, roughly 3,100 of whom paid nearly $15 to buy the game online.

  Through such "entertainment" racists and anti-Semites hope to spread their hate-filled vision to a wider, computer-savvy, younger audience through the violent body-strewn world of shoot-em-up computer games and make some money along the way.

  On Martin Luther King Day 2003, Resistance Records, a distributor of racist, anti-Semitic "White Power" music began to advertise Ethnic Cleansing, a CD-ROM based computer game whose object is to kill "sub-humans" — i.e. Blacks and Latinos — and their "masters," the Jews, who are portrayed as the personification of evil. The ads said, "Celebrate Martin Luther King Day with a virtual Race War!" Resistance Records is owned by the National Alliance, the largest and most active neo-Nazi organization in the United States

  A "review" of Ethnic Cleansing posted on the National Alliance Web site reads:

  "Patterned after popular mainstream video games such as Quake and Doom, the game turns racially motivated violence in "entertainment." Racists and anti-Semites are clearly trying to spread their hate-filled vision to a wider, computer-savvy, younger audience through the violent body-strewn world of shoot-em-up computer games while hoping to make some money along the way."

  The premise of Ethnic Cleansing is that a city — clearly New York — has been destroyed by gangs of "sub-humans" controlled by Jews who are lead by the "end boss" lurking in the subterranean "Lair of the Beast." Plans for world domination are seen in the subway, along with a map of "problem" areas in the U.S. and a sign reading "Diversity, It's Good for Jews."

  The game begins as the player (who can opt to dress in KKK robes or as a Skinhead) emerges from a "ghetto crack house," shooting into a thicket of brown-skinned opponents, then roams the streets and subways murdering "predatory sub-humans" and their Jewish "masters" thereby "saving" the white world. During the game monkey and ape sounds are heard when Blacks are killed, poncho-wearing Latinos say "I'll take a siesta now!" or "Ay carumba!" while "Oy vey!" rings out when Jewish characters are killed. The game has a high level of background detail and various National Alliance signs and posters appear throughout while racist rock blares on the soundtrack.

  "Play" proceeds through 10 levels, racist posters and symbols in most every scene. Finally, the player confronts the "end boss," a rocket launcher-wielding Ariel Sharon, who hurls insults such as: "Oy vey! Can you shoot no better than that?"; "We have destroyed your culture!"; and "We silenced Henry Ford." When Sharon dies, he coughs out "Filthy White dog, you have destroyed thousands of years of planning."

  While the most sophisticated racist game available online, Ethnic Cleansing is just the beginning. Another game is Turner Diaries: The Game based on The Turner Diaries, by William Pierce, long time leader of the National Alliance. The Turner Diaries describes a world wide race war in which white "Aryans" destroy all non-whites and Jews with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. One of the most widely read and cited books on the far-right, it has explicitly influenced, among others, The Order, the Aryan Republican Army, The New Order and Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

  Gary (Gerhard) Lauck, self-styled Nazi (the "Farmbelt Fuehrer) of Lincoln, Nebraska), who often speaks with a particularly bad "German" accent, has several anti-Semitic video games on his website under the heading Nazi Computer-Spiele or Nazi Computer Games.

  Most of these games are much simpler than Ethnic Cleansing but they serve a similar purpose in that they allow players to interact in a racist environment in which they can indulge their fantasies. In one game the player is challenged to shoot "Jewish" rats racing between canisters of Zyklon-B and a Star of David. The setting is the Polish concentration camp Auschwitz.

  The "comedy" section of the Lauck's World Church of the Creator web site includes racist jokes, comics and media files, as well as downloadable racist games. Among these are Aryan 3, Shoot the Blacks, NSDoom (NS is short for National Socialist), and WPDoom (WP stands for White Power).

  Wonderful things for impressionable youngsters to play with, no?