In case you were raised and suckled by she-wolves, here's a little background on Raid Gaza: the Gaza Strip is a piece of land that isn't owned by any sovereign power, and Israel and Hamas (the de facto government and militant wing of the Palestinian National Authority) are fighting over it. Up until late December, what amounts to a glorified border conflict had been relegated to suicide bombings and sporadic missile strikes. On December 27th, however, Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip and have been bombing the balls out of it ever since, although the UN is trying to get them to stop. There have been protests throughout the world, two of which I witnessed during my trip to Paris.

In any case, Raid Gaza is a Newgrounds flash game that is clearly a representation of the author's one-sided view of things: Israel is depicted as an aggressive power mercilessly killing women and children under the pretext of protecting the Israeli border town of Sderot. Raid Gaza is, ostensibly, a real-time strategy game, but the point isn't to win -- it's to keep a high kill ratio. My personal best was 17 Palestinians killed for every 1 Israeli, but the end of the game cites a 25:1 ratio in the actual conflict.

The game is not only politically one-sided, but is mechanically stilted as well -- you, as an Israeli commander, have access to unlimited aid from the United States and a slew of technological weapons, whereas the Palestinians only manage to fire a feeble rocket every couple of seconds. The game is hardly a "game" -- it's nearly impossible not to win, which brings up an interesting discussion point: Should games sacrifice engaging mechanics for the sake of making a political point? As it stands, Raid Gaza functions more as a political statement than a game, and, to be honest, I'm okay with that.

The most succinct summary of the Gaza conflict I've seen yet, and one that reflects my own views, comes from GamePolitics commentor Geoff:

No one is the good guy in this one.  You got hard-line Jews on one side pushing the rest of Israel to action and you got radical Arabs on the other poking the former with a stick.

In the middle are the innocent and diplomatic.  The former gets slaughtered and the latter are ignored.

[Via The Escapist]

[Edit: Destructoid member ajay42 has been kind enough to explain to me, via PM, the degree to which my first two sentences are a gross oversimplification of the actual situation in Gaza. My apologies for the oversight and my gratitude to ajay42.]