In the words of its developer Nidal Nijm—the Brazilian-born son of a retired Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrilla—a new video game aims to counteract “the cliché of representing Muslims and Arabs as terrorists, bandits, villains and the Americans/Israelis as the ‘good guys.’” David May and Jack Gibson see in it something else:

Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the al-Aqsa Mosque, a new game in which players murder Israeli soldiers in an attempt to “free Palestine,” disappeared from Facebook and the video-game distribution service Steam last week. Nijm, . . . Nijm tweeted his frustration: “For ALL ZIONISTs… YOU WILL NEVER STOP #FursanAqsaGame.”

Steam, Facebook, and other platforms should not readmit this glorification of violence, which sets back the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace and might even inspire actual attacks. The game’s trailer declares: “We Never Surrender,” “We Resist Until Death,” and “Resistance is not Terrorism.” Nijm tweeted last month, “My game is not about murdering Israelis,” though that is the central focus of the game. In fact, Nijm goes to great lengths to claim his video game does not promote terrorism. [But] in June 2020, he wrote on Twitter, “I am against the crimes Israel Army does against Palestinian Civilians, just like what nazist did against jews [sic].”

Such incitement to violence helped inspire the “stabbing intifada” in 2015, a series of lone-wolf attacks that left 42 Israelis dead. Just last month, Palestinians carried out several stabbing attacks in Israel. . . . The estimated average age of attackers during the stabbing intifada was between nineteen and twenty years old. A 2018 study across several Arab countries found that 55 percent of those ages eighteen to twenty-four play video games. . . . Fursan al-Aqsa may inspire some of these gamers to live out their video-game fantasies and murder Israelis.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.