Thank you for your enthusiastic words and your interest. If you want to use it in a classroom setting, let me know and I can help. There are two files for the characters, the file "IDI Rolesheets (Aug. 2024).pdf" has what you would give to the students. That should be easy to access. The file entitled "IDI Characters.xlsx" is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that gives you as the instructor a quick overview of every character's position on every issue and what arguments they need to win to win the game. Use Excel or Google Sheets and it should open easily enough.
while a genocide is being perpetrated by Israel at this very moment, how tone-deaf and insane it is to publish something like this, a game where you (can only) play as Zionists during the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, which features game text characterizing Arabs as violent and unreasonable and in which the author refuses to refer to Palestinians directly, erasing their very existence off their own land in a manner so appropriate to Zionist thinking
to clarify, a roleplaying exercise where you take the role of a genocidaire, ethnic cleanser, ethnonationalist—such as the architects of apartheid this game would have you play as—now that is perhaps a compelling idea to create a game around, with enough care and criticality a game like that could MAYBE be designed, but this is not that game, a game in which the game text reproduces the systems of exclusion and violence which characterize Israel
this is a game which reproduces inequalities by it's very structure, which engages with none of its historical context critically, and which erases a genocide (the Nakba) and erases a people (Palestinians) while a second genocide against those people is underway—this is detestable, poor, shameful history-writing and stands as an even worse pedagogical tool
I appreciate that you took the time to comment on my game thoughtfully. This game is part of a larger series of classroom roleplaying games known as Reacting to the Past. I have used these games to teach difficult and important issues in my classroom for over a decade. (Here is a link to an introduction to the series on their website: https://reactingconsortium.org/WIR-basics)
I have found them a great tool for students to understand history on a more personal level, especially when discussing difficult topics. For example, I have used games from this series to explore issues like slavery, civil rights, the Trail of Tears, and even the rise of extremism in Weimar Germany. I have also written several longer games in my own field of medieval history.
That being said, while I understand your arguments, I respectfully disagree with them. I think saying that you should not make a game about Israel's declaration of independence because it excludes Palestinian voices and does not discuss (except very tangentially) the Naqba, misses the point of what I am doing. I am writing a game that is telling one small part of the story of the failed partition of Mandatory Palestine. But also provides a case study in state formation, relevant to people whose focus is not primarily on the conflict between Israel and Palestine today.
I do not think it is fair to characterize this game as something "reproduces the systems of exclusion and violence" - it tries to recreate a moment in history for students as authentically as possible, only putting the people in the room who were historically in the room, and only debating what the participants historically debated. As for the broader contextualization. Yes, I could have said much more, and for a different game I would include a longer historical essay which would include many more things. However, I am constrained by my format. I must keep my role sheets as short as possible so students can read them in the time they have. (This is designed for only one class period) Honestly, I went far over the size these should have been because I wanted to add more details.
Do I think there should be games with Palestinian voices that covers these topics? Of course, I do! Would I use a thoughtfully designed game like that in my classroom? Yes, of course I would! Saying don't create a game because I disagree with the politics of the protagonists - especially when the outcome of their actions are relevant to contemporary politics - is, to me, counterproductive. We should try to understand those in the past we disagree with - even if we disagree with them even more vociferously after trying to understand them!
I would be happy to hear more of your feedback, this game is just a prototype and I welcome and all constructive comments!
On some level, yes, Israel's Declaration of Independence could potentially be a valid topic for a pedagogical game, but even if this game underwent substantial revision, I cannot think of a single classroom I have been in where the premise, text, and appropriateness of this game would not be immediately and wholeheartedly challenged by the entirety of the student participants
I find it interesting that you say you've run participatory classroom games on topics such as genocide and slavery—I have a hard time imagining how that could be possible with regards to ethics and safety. If deep care was taken in their design, I would be very interested in seeing how those games work. I can only hope they were not written with such a deeply uncritical design, and with such a hegemonic voice and POV as this one
My biggest problem is that your game text, the authorial voice, your own voice, 1) mentions only violence against Zionists and Jewish people (the sole semi-exception, you say: "Atrocities are committed on both sides"), 2) does not clarify any difference between Zionists and normal Jewish people, 3) hagiographizes 'Great Men', 4) does not reflect at any point on what it might mean for a classroom of students to play all men, all Zionists, all ethnosupremacists, all nationalists, to themselves 'play' as architects of a regime of genocide and apartheid, without even a mention of safety tools, 5) reproduces the lionizing narratives of a genocidal state as that state at present is undertaking a wholesale genocide in full view, and so of course it makes sense that your game 6) erases Palestinians. You literally refuse to refer to Palestinians at any point in any of your work. Those who oppose Zionism and their genocidaires are simply "Arabs", implicitly non-native non-nationals, and you use the word Palestinian only in a single instance, as an adjective, to clarify a certain kind of Arab. The point here is not that language is important. If you simply revised the text to include the word Palestinian, your way of thinking (whether your own or—if I'm feeling very very charitable—imported from a wider hegemonic discourse that you've thoughtlessly reproduced) still informs the entirety of the structure of the text. You say that Palestinians can go have their own things, make their own things, too. You say that this game is about Zionists, and to each their own place and thing. I think this stinks of apartheid, as does your game, on a meta level and a functional level. It is simply not a critical work, it is useless, it is at worst dangerous. At best it's not worth even the amount of words I have already spent on it
There is a genocide going on in Palestine, against Palestinians, right now, just as there was in 1948. Your work here is completely inappropriate and unsalvageable. The kindest thing I can say to you is that I hate it
Thank you again for taking the time to respond thoughtfully. I will try to answer your critiques as best I can. First, I hope you take time to learn about Reacting to the Past as a genre of games, so you can better understand what the framework I am working in is. (I show my students this video to introduce the topic
Let me try to make you understand my perspective as a historian and game creator. I fully understand your distaste for the last three-quarters of a century of Israel's policies towards the Palestinian people, and I will not defend the policies of past and especially the present Israeli government. But I am here to recreate, as faithfully as possible, a teachable moment from the past. I am doing that despite the fact, that as you rightly point out that moment is exclusionary to most of the voices of the people of Mandatory Palestine in 1948. I limit the voices to those who were physically in the room, as a result the voices are all-male, and all-ethnically Jewish (9 of whom were born in Eastern Europe and the last from the Moroccan Jewish community).
You are also right to notice that I very carefully avoided using the ethnonym "Palestinian" to refer to the Arab population of Mandatory Palestine in 1948. I also carefully avoided using the term 'Israeli' too, because neither of these national identities existed in 1948, but are a result of the creation of Israel and the Naqba. As with the people portrayed in the game, I used the language of the time for the sake of historical accuracy, not to erase history, but to be true to it.
As for the one sided nature of the depictions of violence in the timeline, I can understand your criticism. I worried about this, and made sure to point out both the violence used in the resistance to the Mandate after 1945 by the Yishuv, and that violence was used by extremists on both sides in the opening phases of the 1947-48 War. By the rules of the format, I was actually well over the length the historical introduction was supposed to be. So just I could not justify an in depth mention of Deir Yassin or the King David Hotel bombing, which are not directly relevant to the game, and leave out material that was. Likewise, the narrative is limited by the start date of the game, aside from Deir Yassin, most of what historians describe as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine occurs after this moment in history, as does all of the acts of the government of Israel against the Palestinian people. It is not deliberate erasal or ignoring the suffering of one people, it is a authorial decision to create the most useful short introduction to the task at hand, which is a debate over the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and not a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Reacting to the Past games like this are designed with time for students and instructors to discuss the game afterward. In this debrief, students discuss what they learned and how they felt about the game. I hope instructors will call attention to the lack of diversity in this room, and point out that it would be clearly unacceptable for a representative body to be composed like this today. Likewise, I hope they also bring up all the points you make so they can help serve as context around the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.
While I don't think we will ever agree, I do want to thank you for your feedback and I will incorporate what you said as part of the instructions to instructors on how to talk to the game with their students, because you raise important points that ought to be discussed in the debrief instructions so others running the game point out to students the points you have made. Please do not feel you wasted your time in having this discussion with me, and please feel free to continue the discussion here if you want, or you can contact me privately, as I used my full name and affiliation in the game text, you should have no trouble finding my email. Thank you.
Please ignore this ridiculous "Nakba" narrative idiocy. Just focus on sanity. There is no genocide, and it's really important you have sane games like this in the classroom. I can use it as a teacher, but wouldn't if you accepted any of "Qwo"s revisions.
This is not a game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I don't think a comment section is a good place to discuss what is a complicated issue. It's not what I am here to do, although I suspect my opinion on those events comes down between your views and Qwo's. As for the content of the game, I think the narrative I present is fair under the circumstances. At this point, I intend no revisions to the game's text itself. However, I support instructors of all political views in using the game - and the points QWO makes will be likely be made in post-game discussions by many students. So I think, in the future, I will add a section inviting instructors to discuss some of the issues QWO mentions with their students, especially since the characters, in retrospect, can only be described as an unrepresentative set of voices in the room that are making these key decisions (however common that may have been at the time). You as the instructor are free to guide the discussion how you choose.
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Great fucking game idea. G-d bless Israel. How do you open the IDI characters though?
Thank you for your enthusiastic words and your interest. If you want to use it in a classroom setting, let me know and I can help. There are two files for the characters, the file "IDI Rolesheets (Aug. 2024).pdf" has what you would give to the students. That should be easy to access. The file entitled "IDI Characters.xlsx" is a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that gives you as the instructor a quick overview of every character's position on every issue and what arguments they need to win to win the game. Use Excel or Google Sheets and it should open easily enough.
Um jogo pra quem gosta de brincar de nazisionista.
Forgive me, but the title has been reported incorrectly; I believe the correct one is "Israel's Defecations of Idiocracy". You're welcome.
while a genocide is being perpetrated by Israel at this very moment, how tone-deaf and insane it is to publish something like this, a game where you (can only) play as Zionists during the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba, which features game text characterizing Arabs as violent and unreasonable and in which the author refuses to refer to Palestinians directly, erasing their very existence off their own land in a manner so appropriate to Zionist thinking
truly disgusting
to clarify, a roleplaying exercise where you take the role of a genocidaire, ethnic cleanser, ethnonationalist—such as the architects of apartheid this game would have you play as—now that is perhaps a compelling idea to create a game around, with enough care and criticality a game like that could MAYBE be designed, but this is not that game, a game in which the game text reproduces the systems of exclusion and violence which characterize Israel
this is a game which reproduces inequalities by it's very structure, which engages with none of its historical context critically, and which erases a genocide (the Nakba) and erases a people (Palestinians) while a second genocide against those people is underway—this is detestable, poor, shameful history-writing and stands as an even worse pedagogical tool
I appreciate that you took the time to comment on my game thoughtfully. This game is part of a larger series of classroom roleplaying games known as Reacting to the Past. I have used these games to teach difficult and important issues in my classroom for over a decade. (Here is a link to an introduction to the series on their website: https://reactingconsortium.org/WIR-basics)
I have found them a great tool for students to understand history on a more personal level, especially when discussing difficult topics. For example, I have used games from this series to explore issues like slavery, civil rights, the Trail of Tears, and even the rise of extremism in Weimar Germany. I have also written several longer games in my own field of medieval history.
That being said, while I understand your arguments, I respectfully disagree with them. I think saying that you should not make a game about Israel's declaration of independence because it excludes Palestinian voices and does not discuss (except very tangentially) the Naqba, misses the point of what I am doing. I am writing a game that is telling one small part of the story of the failed partition of Mandatory Palestine. But also provides a case study in state formation, relevant to people whose focus is not primarily on the conflict between Israel and Palestine today.
I do not think it is fair to characterize this game as something "reproduces the systems of exclusion and violence" - it tries to recreate a moment in history for students as authentically as possible, only putting the people in the room who were historically in the room, and only debating what the participants historically debated. As for the broader contextualization. Yes, I could have said much more, and for a different game I would include a longer historical essay which would include many more things. However, I am constrained by my format. I must keep my role sheets as short as possible so students can read them in the time they have. (This is designed for only one class period) Honestly, I went far over the size these should have been because I wanted to add more details.
Do I think there should be games with Palestinian voices that covers these topics? Of course, I do! Would I use a thoughtfully designed game like that in my classroom? Yes, of course I would! Saying don't create a game because I disagree with the politics of the protagonists - especially when the outcome of their actions are relevant to contemporary politics - is, to me, counterproductive. We should try to understand those in the past we disagree with - even if we disagree with them even more vociferously after trying to understand them!
I would be happy to hear more of your feedback, this game is just a prototype and I welcome and all constructive comments!
On some level, yes, Israel's Declaration of Independence could potentially be a valid topic for a pedagogical game, but even if this game underwent substantial revision, I cannot think of a single classroom I have been in where the premise, text, and appropriateness of this game would not be immediately and wholeheartedly challenged by the entirety of the student participants
I find it interesting that you say you've run participatory classroom games on topics such as genocide and slavery—I have a hard time imagining how that could be possible with regards to ethics and safety. If deep care was taken in their design, I would be very interested in seeing how those games work. I can only hope they were not written with such a deeply uncritical design, and with such a hegemonic voice and POV as this one
My biggest problem is that your game text, the authorial voice, your own voice, 1) mentions only violence against Zionists and Jewish people (the sole semi-exception, you say: "Atrocities are committed on both sides"), 2) does not clarify any difference between Zionists and normal Jewish people, 3) hagiographizes 'Great Men', 4) does not reflect at any point on what it might mean for a classroom of students to play all men, all Zionists, all ethnosupremacists, all nationalists, to themselves 'play' as architects of a regime of genocide and apartheid, without even a mention of safety tools, 5) reproduces the lionizing narratives of a genocidal state as that state at present is undertaking a wholesale genocide in full view, and so of course it makes sense that your game 6) erases Palestinians. You literally refuse to refer to Palestinians at any point in any of your work. Those who oppose Zionism and their genocidaires are simply "Arabs", implicitly non-native non-nationals, and you use the word Palestinian only in a single instance, as an adjective, to clarify a certain kind of Arab. The point here is not that language is important. If you simply revised the text to include the word Palestinian, your way of thinking (whether your own or—if I'm feeling very very charitable—imported from a wider hegemonic discourse that you've thoughtlessly reproduced) still informs the entirety of the structure of the text. You say that Palestinians can go have their own things, make their own things, too. You say that this game is about Zionists, and to each their own place and thing. I think this stinks of apartheid, as does your game, on a meta level and a functional level. It is simply not a critical work, it is useless, it is at worst dangerous. At best it's not worth even the amount of words I have already spent on it
There is a genocide going on in Palestine, against Palestinians, right now, just as there was in 1948. Your work here is completely inappropriate and unsalvageable. The kindest thing I can say to you is that I hate it
Thank you again for taking the time to respond thoughtfully. I will try to answer your critiques as best I can. First, I hope you take time to learn about Reacting to the Past as a genre of games, so you can better understand what the framework I am working in is. (I show my students this video to introduce the topic
and this is the website of the Consortium in charge of Reacting: https://reactingconsortium.org/Let me try to make you understand my perspective as a historian and game creator. I fully understand your distaste for the last three-quarters of a century of Israel's policies towards the Palestinian people, and I will not defend the policies of past and especially the present Israeli government. But I am here to recreate, as faithfully as possible, a teachable moment from the past. I am doing that despite the fact, that as you rightly point out that moment is exclusionary to most of the voices of the people of Mandatory Palestine in 1948. I limit the voices to those who were physically in the room, as a result the voices are all-male, and all-ethnically Jewish (9 of whom were born in Eastern Europe and the last from the Moroccan Jewish community).
You are also right to notice that I very carefully avoided using the ethnonym "Palestinian" to refer to the Arab population of Mandatory Palestine in 1948. I also carefully avoided using the term 'Israeli' too, because neither of these national identities existed in 1948, but are a result of the creation of Israel and the Naqba. As with the people portrayed in the game, I used the language of the time for the sake of historical accuracy, not to erase history, but to be true to it.
As for the one sided nature of the depictions of violence in the timeline, I can understand your criticism. I worried about this, and made sure to point out both the violence used in the resistance to the Mandate after 1945 by the Yishuv, and that violence was used by extremists on both sides in the opening phases of the 1947-48 War. By the rules of the format, I was actually well over the length the historical introduction was supposed to be. So just I could not justify an in depth mention of Deir Yassin or the King David Hotel bombing, which are not directly relevant to the game, and leave out material that was. Likewise, the narrative is limited by the start date of the game, aside from Deir Yassin, most of what historians describe as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine occurs after this moment in history, as does all of the acts of the government of Israel against the Palestinian people. It is not deliberate erasal or ignoring the suffering of one people, it is a authorial decision to create the most useful short introduction to the task at hand, which is a debate over the Israeli Declaration of Independence, and not a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Reacting to the Past games like this are designed with time for students and instructors to discuss the game afterward. In this debrief, students discuss what they learned and how they felt about the game. I hope instructors will call attention to the lack of diversity in this room, and point out that it would be clearly unacceptable for a representative body to be composed like this today. Likewise, I hope they also bring up all the points you make so they can help serve as context around the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.
While I don't think we will ever agree, I do want to thank you for your feedback and I will incorporate what you said as part of the instructions to instructors on how to talk to the game with their students, because you raise important points that ought to be discussed in the debrief instructions so others running the game point out to students the points you have made. Please do not feel you wasted your time in having this discussion with me, and please feel free to continue the discussion here if you want, or you can contact me privately, as I used my full name and affiliation in the game text, you should have no trouble finding my email. Thank you.
Please ignore this ridiculous "Nakba" narrative idiocy. Just focus on sanity. There is no genocide, and it's really important you have sane games like this in the classroom. I can use it as a teacher, but wouldn't if you accepted any of "Qwo"s revisions.
This is not a game about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I don't think a comment section is a good place to discuss what is a complicated issue. It's not what I am here to do, although I suspect my opinion on those events comes down between your views and Qwo's. As for the content of the game, I think the narrative I present is fair under the circumstances. At this point, I intend no revisions to the game's text itself. However, I support instructors of all political views in using the game - and the points QWO makes will be likely be made in post-game discussions by many students. So I think, in the future, I will add a section inviting instructors to discuss some of the issues QWO mentions with their students, especially since the characters, in retrospect, can only be described as an unrepresentative set of voices in the room that are making these key decisions (however common that may have been at the time). You as the instructor are free to guide the discussion how you choose.