The screen opens, and the father tells his daughter to run with the mother, so that they won't be hit by the bombs. The mother and daughter run, but then a shell hits the mother and she falls.
""Don't sleep, mother," the daughter sobs - but to no avail. Later, the daughter asks her father to play soccer with her friends on the beach, but a shell from a ship kills the entire group of children.
Unbelievable, but this is part of a popular computer game, which depicts the 'crimes' of IDF soldiers and the suffering of Gaza residents.
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The game, called "Leila and the Shadows of War," was launched about six months ago and has so far received more than one hundred thousand downloads from the Apple and Google platforms.
Players in the game take on the role of Leila the girl and her father, who are trying to find shelter and navigate the bombarded Gaza: "Time is against you, your family is in danger, and there is nowhere to hide or anything to do except embark on a heroic journey and reach safety.".
Public Security Minister Gilad Argan has written to Apple and Google demanding that they immediately remove the app from Google Play and the Apple Store, claiming that it violates the companies' policies on offensive content. "The game contains false, defamatory and misleading content. This is an aggressive and insensitive app for the Israeli people that may also threaten the safety of Israeli reservists," Erdan wrote in a letter, which has not yet been responded to.
The Walla website noted that while the game's description in the app stores does not mention Gaza or Operation Protective Edge, on the game developer's website, it states that it is based on real events and "tells the story of a little girl living in Gaza during the 2014 war.".
The game does not include actual IDF soldier characters, but depicts a world of rocket and bomb attacks that kill innocent people for no reason, and realistically recreates scenes from "Protective Edge" for which Israel received international condemnation, such as the bombing of UNRWA facilities or the attack on the Gaza beach in which four Palestinian children were killed.
The game's developer, Rashid Abu Aida, a resident of Gaza, also wrote on his website: "This is not just a game, it is a call for help... I am a father of two children. When the war in Gaza began and I saw the pictures of the children killed by their parents, I was shocked, I had a difficult feeling - a combination of sadness, anxiety, empathy and anger. All I thought was what if this happened to me. I chose to share these feelings to convey a message about how we Palestinians live in such a situation.".
