In response to the heinous murders perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October, the far-right Israeli government, with the support of most Western governments, including France, is carrying out a massacre.
The Israeli army is bombing the Gaza Strip indiscriminately, committing one war crime after another, and is preparing to invade it in a land and sea operation. More than 2 million Palestinians, the vast majority of them children, are besieged there.
As we write these lines, they have run out of drinking water and have barely any electricity, hospitals are running out of medical supplies and are being directly targeted by bombings, and food stocks are dwindling dangerously. Every single person held prisoner in the Gaza Strip is facing imminent death.
In France, the government is violating the law to repress all demonstrations and criminalise all forms of support for the Palestinian people. Everywhere, the mere fact of calling for peace is enough to be treated as a terrorist. Palestinian voices are repressed and treated as outcasts, and an entire people is considered to be terrorists. Suffering the consequences of Israeli policy, Jews all over the world are afraid of an upsurge in anti-Semitic acts. The current situation is extremely worrying in every respect.
We call for peace in Palestine, for an urgent ceasefire and for the total lifting of the siege of Gaza. We also call for an end to Israel’s colonisation of Palestine and recognition of its statehood, the only solutions that will bring a lasting end to the conflict and its deadly repercussions.
Video games are complicit
Right now, our industry seems insignificant compared to the urgent need for immediate political action. But we video game workers do not forget the role that our industry plays in spreading the fascist ideas that are being implemented here before our very eyes.
Culture in general plays an important political role, and is used as a weapon by death peddlers the world over. Video games are no stranger to this, and even play a part in spearheading global militarism. Collaborations with the far right, the police or the army, and war crimes revisionism are creative choices decided by our directors.
In a more or less subtle and more or less conscious way, all representations glorifying manly heroism, conquest, murder, imperialism, colonialism, sexism… in all genres and all production sizes, help to strengthen far-right political ideologies.
We must fight, over the long term, to ensure that our medium ceases to work towards the oppression of peoples. On the contrary, we must do everything we can to make video games a weapon for peace, against colonialism and against nationalism.