Iran unveils 'Israeli crimes' game
2010-09-02 20:07
Tehran - Iran's Islamist Basij militia unveiled two new video games depicting Israeli "crimes" on Thursday, on the eve of annual Palestinian solidarity rallies, the official IRNA news agency reported.
One of the games, dubbed Assault on Freedom Convoy, is set around Israel's deadly May 31 commando raid on an aid flotilla attempting to break its naval blockade of Gaza which sparked an international outcry.
A website run by student Basijis said the game exposes the "crimes of the Zionist regime during the attack on the flotilla," which left nine Turkish activists dead and sparked a crisis in Israel's traditionally close relations with Turkey.
The second game unveiled by the head of the student wing of the Basij, Mohammad Reza Jokar, is called Devil Den 2, IRNA said.
"The young generation must find out about the Zionist regime and since video games enjoy large audiences, they were unveiled ahead of Quds Day," it quoted Jokar as saying in reference to the annual solidarity day marked since the 1979 revolution on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In recent years, Iran has released a number of video games focussing on political issues, including its controversial nuclear programme, as it attempts to provide a more ideologically acceptable alternative to pirated Western games.
Iran has been bitterly opposed to the state of Israel ever since the revolution, an animosity that has hardened under the presidency of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has repeatedly predicted the Jewish state's demise.
Israel, which is widely believed to have the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal, has never ruled out a resort to military action against Iran to stop it developing a weapons capability of its own, an ambition Tehran denies.
- SAPA