Pro-Israel advertisements appear in video games such as Angry Birds
- October 31, 2023
- 0
Maria Julia Assis was having lunch at her home in north London when her 6-year-old son ran into the dining room, his face pale. A puzzle game on
Maria Julia Assis was having lunch at her home in north London when her 6-year-old son ran into the dining room, his face pale.
A puzzle game on his Android phone was interrupted by a video showing Hamas militants, terrified Israeli families and blurry graphic images.
The black screen reflected a message from Israel’s Foreign Ministry, telling a first-grader: “WE WILL MAKE SURE THOSE WHO ARE BROUGHT TO US PAY A HIGH PRICE.”
Assis, a 28-year-old Brazilian waitress, said the ad shocked her son and she quickly deleted the game.
“I was surprised,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “He literally said: “What are these damn ads doing to my game?”
Reuters was unable to determine how the announcement reached his son’s video game, but his family is not the only one. The agency has documented at least five other cases across Europe in which players, including children, were shown the same pro-Israel video with footage of rocket attacks, a blazing explosion and masked gunmen.
In at least one case, an advertisement in a popular game Angry Birds by Roviodevelopment company owned by SEGA.
Rovio confirmed that “somehow this disturbing content advert has mistakenly found its way into our game” and is now being manually blocked.
Israeli Army Publications. Facebook.
David Saranga, head of digital technology at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, confirmed that the video was a government-promoted ad but said he had “no idea” how it got into the various games.
He noted that the video was part of an advertising campaign by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which has spent $1.5 million on online advertising since a Hamas attack on civilians in southern Israel on Oct. 7 sparked the Lupe war.
He added that officials had given advertisers specific instructions to “block individuals under 18.”
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry shared a statement saying the ministry was working to reassure public opinion by sharing evidence of suffering in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli bombing following the October 7 attack, but was not told whether it used advertising as a tool.
Representatives for Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on its media campaigns.
Reuters documented six cases – in Britain, France, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands – in which people saw the same or similar advertisements as Assis’s son, or said their children saw them.
Reuters: Raphael Sutter in Washington, Sheila Dang and Katie Paul in New York.
Source: Aristegui Noticias
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