Target practice Target practice

Ukrainian game kills Jews, Americans

In online ‘Nationalist simulator,’ users strafe the motherland’s ‘enemies,’ including Jews, gays, Russians, Americans and communists

By Ilan Ben Zion 21 November 2013, 2:59 pm

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Ilan Ben Zion is an AFP reporter and a former news editor at The Times of Israel.

A Ukrainian game that has players kill Jews, gays and Americans. (screen capture: five.od.ua)

If you were a kid between the late 1970s and the early ’90s, chances are you’ve played Space Invaders, while the more adventurous among us have also tried Papers, Please. Now, a Ukrainian website features a throwback to those games with one that challenges players to defend the motherland against Ukraine’s enemies: gays, Russians, Americans, communists and Jews.

Egged on by occasional chants of “Kill, kill!” in English and an unrelenting stream of invective in Ukrainian, players move a small Ukrainian flag icon armed with an AK-47 and fire on successive waves of targets.

The objective of the game is to shoot the rainbow flags, Russian flags, American flags, red balls and Jews, who are represented by orange circles adorned with yarmulkes and sidelocks.

If you let too many enemies pass by unscathed, the game, titled “Nationalist Simulator — Defend Ukraine,” is over.

One Twitter user remarked that no matter how hard he tried, he found it impossible to defeat the unending wave of Jewish icons in the game. A Russian Twitter user asked, “God, why had no one come up with this amazing game?”