Game recreating October 7 atrocities offered to Canadians on Steam

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A video game glorifying the October 7 attacks on Israel is available for purchase on Steam, a digital distribution service.

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The game, Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, was originally released in April 2022. An update released following the Hamas invasion now allows players to recreate certain atrocities, such as attacking an Israeli military base using motorized paragliders, a tactic used by Hamas on October 7.

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In October, the game was pulled from Steam in the United Kingdom after the company was contacted by the country’s digital counter-terrorism unit. However, as of Monday, the game remained accessible for Canadian users on Steam and was even heavily discounted during Black Friday sales.

Valve Corporation, the parent company of Steam, one of the world’s largest online gaming marketplaces, did not respond to National Post’s request for comment prior to publication.

The trailer for the updated gameplay features an Arabic narrator telling players: “Where are those who carry the explosive belts? Where are them? Come here, I want an explosive belt to blow up myself over the Zionists!!! It is a jihad, a jihad of victory or martyrdom!”

Gameplay footage posted to YouTube shows militants chanting Allahu Akbar (“God is great”) and “From the river to the sea,” a Hamas rallying cry associated with calling for the destruction of Israel. The game also allows players to dress as keffiyeh-clad militants with green headbands, a popular identifier worn by Hamas terrorists, and identifies Israeli forces with an inverted red triangle above them — another symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos.

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Death sequences after a player is killed show a bloodied hand laid across a Palestinian flag captioned: “You became a martyr. Rejoice, O mother of the martyr. Rejoice! Prepare your son for his marriage (in paradise), tie the band on all your pain and spread his wedding handkerchief, spread your anger against the oppressor, his injustice must be stopped.”

The International Legal Forum (ILF), a global network of lawyers that combats antisemitism, warned Valve in late 2021, ahead of the game’s release, that distributing Fursan al-Aqsa may pose a “direct violation of United States anti-terror laws and (be) subject to potential civil litigation.”

The company’s decision to not remove the game for Canadian users, ILF’s CEO Arsen Ostrovsky noted, may lead his organization to “consider pursuing immediate legal action.”

“Fursan al-Aqsa is not a mere ‘game,’ but a display in utter sadism,” Ostrovsky told National Post in a written statement. “In glorifying the barbaric atrocities of October 7th, the creator is effectively contributing to the recruitment and radicalization of potential terrorists and inciting them to recreate and carry out such gruesome acts of violence.

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“This may place both the creator of the game and the distributor Steam, and parent company, Valve, in direct violation of Canada’s anti-terror legislation and Criminal Code,” the Tel-Aviv-based lawyer added.

“Authorities in Canada should follow the lead of their British counterparts, where police and counter-terrorism authorities prohibited its sale across the U.K., due to concerns that such violent and extremist online material may be used as a tool to recruit potential terrorists and incite acts of violence.”

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Brazilian-Palestinian game developer Nidal Nijim has said that Fursan al-Aqsa does not encourage antisemitism and, like similar war-based shooter games, offers a different perspective on ongoing conflicts.

“This game does not promote ‘terrorism,’ antisemitism, hate against Jews or any other group, this is a message of protest against the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian lands. Fursan al-Aqsa is a video game about war like many other games here on Steam (Six Days in Fallujah, Call of Duty and others),” says a disclaimer on Steam, written partially in bold and all-caps.

“All the Characters, Art and Storylines depicted in this game are purely the work of fiction. Any similarity to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The plot of this game is a fictional history inspired by real facts. Even the political and military groups depicted on the game are fictional. In this game, the player does not shoot Israeli civilians, women, children, elderly, only soldiers,” says the message.

Older footage of the game before its post-October 7 update shows the opening credits of the game featuring a Palestinian militant wearing a suicide vest. The game’s narrator is identified as Abu Ubaida, the name of a well-known Hamas spokesperson representing its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades.

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“Today is the Day of Avenge. I will make you taste the pain and burn you like rats!” the character says in Arabic. “We are people who never surrender, we either win or become martyrs, and both are victory!” the narrator says as the character detonates the vest and kills the surrounding Israel soldiers.

In an interview with a YouTube game reviewer, Nijim said his “father is a former Palestinian fighter, as well.” When asked to elaborate which organization he was with, Nijim said Fatah, the group formerly led by Yasser Arafat that was deemed a terror group by the United States until it renounced violence in the early 1990s as part of the peace process with Israel.

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