Dutch state-funded TV VPRO offers anti-Semitic game.

Dutch state-funded TV VPRO offers anti-Semitic game.(JPost)HT: IsraelMatzav.THE HAGUE\BERLIN – A Dutch public broadcasting network last month offered its viewers a board game featuring Israeli settlers who use “Jewish stinginess” and “the Anne Frank card” to colonize the West Bank.Organizations combating anti-Semitism have called on the Dutch government to persuade the network, VPRO, to halt the downloading of the board game.
A VPRO representative said the game was not anti-Semitic, but rather a thought-provoking satire.
The game, titled “The Settlers of the West Bank,” is based on the multiplayer hit “The Settlers of Catan,” first released in Germany in 1995. The Dutch variant appeared in 2010 on the VPRO website – a self-described liberal-Protestant network.
In the game, the user is a settler trying to expand his community and mine diamonds and Dead Sea mud while producing textile and bulldozers. Players can use the “Jewish stinginess” card to force competitors to hand over resources. The instructions refer three times to the “nation’s typical mercantile spirit.”
Terrorist attacks are described as a natural result of settlement expansion. “Saw wood, and you get wood chips: Not everyone’s happy with the Israeli settlements. Least of all the terrorist,” the instructions explain. “Terrorist attacks” cost players resources.
The settler may also use the “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad card” to avoid losing resources to a terrorist and simultaneously draw resources from other players. The Anne Frank House is a “winning point” for the settler.
The game first appeared on VPRO’s website for younger viewers and was prominently reposted last month. The network explained the reposting by saying: “It’s one of the items everyone loves to hate.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly condemned VPRO for publishing the “disturbing” game.
“It would be more likely as a product of neo-Nazis or Ahmadinejad,” Dr. Shimon Samuels, the center’s director for international relations, told The Jerusalem Post.
References to Jewish stinginess, the exploitation of minerals and the “contemptuous misuse” of Ann Frank’s House as a “winning point” were “anti-Semitic tropes,” Samuels said.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science provided 89 percent of VPRO’s budget of 51,973,000 euros in 2010.
“This funding makes the Netherlands the largest financier of hate incitement among youth in Europe,” Samuels said.
Manche said that VPRO told the ministry that the website that offers the game was developed by young editors of the weekly magazine VPRO Gids, which does not receive a government subsidy, but is financed through membership fees from VPRO’s approximately 300,000 subscribers.
In the Netherlands, the original board game, “The Settlers of Catan,” is marketed by the 999 Games company.Hmmmm........Perhaps another 'Topic' to adress by Geert Wilder's PVV party?Read the full story here.