Six Days in Fallujah: This video game is an 'Arab murder simulator,' critics say

By Alaa Elassar, CNN 

Najla Bassim Abdulelah grew up in a war. The regular sight of dead bodies and the memory of her friend being shot next to her as they walked to school stained her childhood.

© Victura, Inc. A scene from the video game "Six Days in Fallujah."

Children's laughter was replaced with an incessant soundtrack of exploding bombs, and she lived with a crippling fear of losing her family.

So when Abdulelah, who now lives in Atlanta, Georgia, heard that "Six Days in Fallujah," a first-person shooter video game set during the Iraq War's bloodiest battle, was on the verge of being released, she was horrified.

"I am disgusted that this is something that will be producing profit when people like me suffered the consequences of this war and will have to watch people play it for fun," Abdulelah, 28, told CNN. "I just can't get past the inhumanity."

For Abdulelah and other Iraq War survivors, the imminent release of "Six Days in Fallujah" threatens to reopen old wounds and trivialize their pain.

They want the game shelved.

But the creators of the video game say it's grossly misunderstood, and that they're merely using gameplay -- the way players interact with a video game -- to teach history.

'A massive killing of Arabs'

Part documentary and part video game, "Six Days in Fallujah" uses gameplay to recount history and recreate true stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah. The offensive, code named Operation Phantom Fury, saw the US Marines lead a joint force of American, British and Iraqi troops into the ancient city.

The battle lasted from November 7 to December 23, 2004, and, according to the US Army, is widely regarded as the US' toughest urban battle since Huế, Vietnam, when ferocious fighting between American troops and North Vietnamese soldiers resulted in the deaths of hundreds -- if not thousands -- of citizens, who were buried in unmarked mass graves by the communist forces.

In Fallujah, US-led forces went house to house hunting for suspected insurgents. Fighters on both sides, as well as thousands of innocent Iraqis caught in the crossfire, did their best to avoid snipers and booby traps.

"We were told going into Fallujah, into the combat area, that every single person that was walking, talking, breathing was an enemy combatant. As such, every single person that was walking down the street or in a house was a target," Jeff Englehart, a former US soldier with the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, said in the 2005 documentary "Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre."

© Victura, Inc. A scene from "Six Days in Fallujah." Developers say they collaborated with more than 100 service members to recreate real events.

US-led forces used more than 300 bombs, 6,000 rounds of artillery and 29,000 mortar rounds, according to the US Marines. Military officials also confirmed that troops used white phosphorous, a highly controversial incendiary weapon that burns the skin.

Ross Caputi, a former US Marine with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, recalls some of the controversial tactics used during the battle, including firing grenades or gun rounds into homes before entering, in case insurgents were hiding inside.

"These tactics were meant to keep us safe. But I learned later that tens of thousands of civilians were still hiding in their houses during the operation, so these tactics would have put them in a lot of danger," Caputi told CNN. "The hardship that Phantom Fury imposed on Fallujans and the destruction it caused made me feel really ashamed of what we were doing."

© Mahdi Mohammad Iraqi-American Mohammed Husain wants "Six Days in Fallujah" shelved.

In the end, more than 80 American soldiers were killed, CNN reported. The number of civilian casualties remains unknown, but at least 800 innocent Iraqis were killed, according to the Red Cross. Local NGOs estimate the battle killed up to 6,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, The Guardian has reported.

Describing the aftermath, Englehart said, "It seemed like just a massive killing of Arabs. It looked like just a massive killing."


A 'new way to understand' history

"Six Days in Fallujah" was originally developed by Atomic Games and set to be released by Japanese game publisher Konami in 2010. But the Tokyo-based company withdrew from the project a year early due to widespread criticism that it was offensive. Atomic Games went out of business and the project was shelved.

In February 2021, developer Highwire Games and publisher Victura, founded by former Atomic Games CEO Peter Tamte, announced they were resurrecting "Six Days in Fallujah."

The game is set to be released by the end of 2021.

"It's hard to understand what combat is actually like through fake people doing fake things in fake places," Tamte said in a statement announcing the game's release. "This generation showed sacrifice and courage in Iraq as remarkable as any in history. And now they're offering the rest of us a new way to understand one of the most important events of our century. It's time to challenge stereotypes about what games can be."

To that end, the developers say they collaborated with more than 100 service members who provided testimony, photographs and videos to recreate real events "with authenticity and respect." They also interviewed 27 Iraqis, 23 of whom are from Fallujah.

© Victura, Inc. A scene from "Six Days in Fallujah" shows a US serviceman aiming his weapon at an Iraqi man wearing a traditional headdress.

In the game, a player can choose to be a US serviceman leading a team on missions against insurgents, or an unarmed Iraqi father trying to escape with his family to safety. While playing, gamers will hear from real US service members, who narrate the missions, and Iraqi civilians, who relay their experiences.

© Courtesy Arny Soejoedi Iraqi-American Najla Bassim Abdulelah says "Six Days in Fallujah" is offensive to Iraq War survivors.

"Players will encounter civilians during gameplay, and these people also speak directly to players through video interviews," Tamte told CNN. "We want players to get to know these people as real human beings, rather than just avatars on a computer screen. And we want players to hear these Iraqis' perspectives and stories in their own words."

Developers regularly consult with Iraqis on how they are portrayed in the game, Tamte says. If a player shoots an Iraqi civilian, the mission ends in failure. The only Iraqis who are allowed to be killed are insurgents.

'An Arab murder simulator'

Abdulelah understands the premise of "Six Days in Fallujah" and Victura's rationale for releasing the game. She's a gamer herself.

But she says that taking a real life event, in which people suffered and died, and turning it into a game trivializes the experience.

There are more respectful and credible ways to learn about what happened in Fallujah, she says, pointing to news stories, books and documentaries produced about the battle.

"I got chills in my spine thinking about the idea that they can use the scenario of someone escaping something so tragic for a game," Abdulelah said, referring to the scenario in which a player can choose to be an Iraqi father fleeing with his family. "It brings me to tears. How is this okay?"

Mohammed Husain, also an Iraqi-American, says he was "hurt and disturbed" by news that the game will be released. He worries that the game will lessen the battle's significance, especially among young players.

"Instead of a historical incident, now they'll see it as a game," Husain, 26, told CNN.

Husain, whose parents are Iraq War refugees, also worries that insurgents in the game look like typical Iraqi men, which he said could lead to bias in the real world. Screenshots from the game show some insurgents distinguished by black and white headdress, which is common attire in Iraq and other Arab countries.

"It dehumanizes Iraqi people, showing how some are insurgents, some are Al-Qaeda, some are civilians, with no way of differentiating them. It desensitizes this generation to this kind of violence against our people," he said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, worries that the game could reinforce harmful stereotypes of Iraqis, as well as other Arabs and Muslims.

CAIR and Veterans for Peace (VFP) repeated calls on Friday to shelve "Six Days in Fallujah." In August, they issued a public letter denouncing it as a game that "glorifies violence that took the lives of over 800 Iraqi civilians, justifies the illegal invasion of Iraq and reinforces Islamophobic narratives."

In April, the two organizations partnered to launch a petition calling on video game companies -- including Microsoft Corporation (Xbox), Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation) and Valve Corporation -- not to host or digitally distribute the game.

Garett Reppenhagen, VFP's executive director, is a former US Army sniper who served in the Sunni Triangle during the Second Battle of Fallujah.

"As a combat veteran and gamer, I find it troubling to see what amounts to an Arab murder simulator, which fails to acknowledge the impact of siege warfare against an unarmed and trapped civilian population," Reppenhagen told CNN.

When asked about criticism of "Six Days in Fallujah" and the petition, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN: "We're aware of concerns and are looking into the content."

Neither Sony nor Valve responded to CNN's request for comment.

'How would you feel?'

Victura is standing firm in its decision to release "Six Days in Fallujah." It insists the game provides a new and exciting way for people to learn about what happened there.

"When we originally announced Six Days in Fallujah in 2009, we learned that some people believe video games shouldn't tackle real-life events. To these people, video games seem more like toys than a medium capable of communicating something insightful. We disagree," the makers said in a statement in February. "Video games can connect us in ways other media cannot."

Critics want people to learn about the tragedy that unfolded in Fallujah, too. But they say that turning it into a first-person shooter game that's played for entertainment is insensitive and disrespectful, especially when many Iraqis are still reeling from the destruction.

"Six Days in Fallujah" is a "disgrace" to the gaming industry, says Abdulelah. The trauma of Iraqis like herself, she says, should not be "turned into a show and tell."

"This isn't honoring the innocents who died. It's very disrespectful to their memory. Not to mention, this is very recent history. People are still living through and digesting the trauma they've acquired in the Iraq War," she said. "My family and I witnessed mortifying, horrible things ... It's not a memory we want to sit or revisit or talk about."

Hospitals in Fallujah have reported spikes in birth defects and cancer cases since 2005, according to a 2010 study in which some medical experts suggested the use of depleted uranium may be to blame.

Many Iraqis who lived through the war also suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have yet to receive any type of care for their mental health, according to researchers.

A 2014 study in Baghdad showed that over 80% of the participants reported experiencing at least one traumatic event that led to them suffering from PTSD and other mental health issues.

Husain, who avoids documentaries about the war due to PTSD from his yearly trips to Iraq, including one in which he says he nearly died in a car explosion, says shelving the game "should not be a debate."

When asked if he had a message for Highwire Games and Victura, Husain posed a question of his own:

"Have you people not lost loved ones?" he asked. "How would you feel if you were on the receiving end? If you saw a game about a tragedy that impacted your family, your people? How would you feel?"

Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic

The Many Ways Bombs Can Kill

by Joshua Frank and Tom Engelhardt | Sep 5, 2025 | 

Originally appeared at TomDispatch.

Honestly, can you believe it? Only a couple of weeks after Israeli forces targeted and killed four Al Jazeera journalists in a tent outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, it happened again. This time, at least five journalists, including one who “had reported for The Associated Press on children being treated for starvation at the same facility,” died in a second Israeli air strike on Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, after rescuers (and journalists covering them) rushed to deal with the initial strike on the top floor of one of that hospital’s buildings. All told, in fact, it seems that nearly 200 journalists and media workers of various sorts have been killed (or should the word be slaughtered?) since the war in Gaza began.

Even for wars, such figures are staggering — and, of course, they’re only part of the almost unimaginable toll of dead and wounded in that remarkably small 25-mile strip of land that’s been the focus of Israeli devastation since the nightmarish Hamas attack on Israel occurred almost two years ago.

And worse yet, as TomDispatch regular Joshua Frank reports today, whatever the casualty figures from that ongoing slaughter may prove to be when the fighting finally stops (assuming it does someday), it will be anything but the final count. At least it won’t be if you include all of the human beings devastated by the conflict. Sadly, in some fashion, we really do need to add to that count a potential epidemic of casualties from cancer that are likely to be caused by that nightmarish war. Let Frank explain. ~ Tom Engelhardt

---

Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic

By Joshua Frank

A week after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, a large explosion incinerated a parking lot near the busy Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, killing more than 470 people. It was a horrifying, chaotic scene. Burnt clothing was strewn about, scorched vehicles piled atop one another, and charred buildings surrounded the impact zone. Israel claimed the blast was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian extremists, but an investigation by Forensic Architecture later indicated that the missile was most likely launched from Israel, not from inside Gaza.

In those first days of the onslaught, it wasn’t yet clear that wiping out Gaza’s entire healthcare system could conceivably be part of the Israeli plan. After all, it’s well known that purposely bombing or otherwise destroying hospitals violates the Geneva Conventions and is a war crime, so there was still some hope that the explosion at Al-Ahli was accidental. And that, of course, would be the narrative that Israeli authorities would continue to push over the nearly two years of death and misery that followed.

A month into Israel’s Gaza offensive, however, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would raid the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, dismantling its dialysis center with no explanation as to why such life-saving medical equipment would be targeted. (Not even Israel was contending that Hamas was having kidney problems.) Then, in December 2023, Al-Awda Hospital, also in northern Gaza, was hit, while at least one doctor was shot by Israeli snipers stationed outside it. As unnerving as such news stories were, the most gruesome footage released at the time came from Al-Nasr children’s hospital, where infants were found dead and decomposing in an empty ICU ward. Evacuation orders had been given and the medical staff had fled, unable to take the babies with them.

For those monitoring such events, a deadly pattern was beginning to emerge, and Israel’s excuses for its malevolent behavior were already losing credibility.

Shortly after Israel issued warnings to evacuate the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City in mid-January 2024, its troops launched rockets at the building, destroying what remained of its functioning medical equipment. Following that attack, ever more clinics were also targeted by Israeli forces. A Jordan Field Hospital was shelled that January and again this past August. An air strike hit Yafa hospital early in December 2023. The Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in southern Gaza was also damaged last May and again this August, when the hospital and an ambulance were struck, killing 20, including five journalists.

While human-rights groups like the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and the Red Cross have condemned Israel for such attacks, its forces have continued to decimate medical facilities and aid sites. At the same time, Israeli authorities claimed that they were only targeting Hamas command centers and weapons storage facilities.

The Death of Gaza’s Only Cancer Center

In early 2024, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, first hit in October 2023 and shuttered in November of that year, was in the early stages of being demolished by IDF battalions. A video released in February by Middle East Eye showed footage of an elated Israeli soldier sharing a TikTok video of himself driving a bulldozer into that hospital, chuckling as his digger crushed a cinderblock wall. “The hospital accidentally broke,” he said. Evidence of Israel’s crimes was by then accumulating, much of it provided by the IDF itself.

When that Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital opened in 2018, it quickly became Gaza’s leading and most well-equipped cancer treatment facility. As the Covid-19 pandemic reached Gaza in 2020, all oncology operations were transferred to that hospital to free up space at other clinics, making it the only cancer center to serve Gaza’s population of more than two million.

This hospital will help transform the health sector,” Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awwad said shortly before its opening. “[It] will help people who are going through extreme difficulties.”

Little did he know that those already facing severe difficulties due to their cancer diagnoses would all too soon face full-blown catastrophe. In March 2025, what remained of the hospital would be razed, erasing all traces of Gaza’s once-promising cancer treatment.

Before October 7, 2023, the most common cancers afflicting Palestinians in Gaza were breast and colon cancer. Survival rates were, however, much lower there than in Israel, thanks to more limited medical resources and restrictions imposed by that country. From 2016 to 2019, while cases in Gaza were on the rise, there was at least hope that the hospital, funded by Turkey, would offer much-needed cancer screenings that had previously been unavailable.

“The repercussions of the current conflict on cancer care in Gaza will likely be felt for years to come,” according to a November 2023 editorial in the medical journal Cureus. “The immediate challenges of drugs, damaged infrastructure, and reduced access to specialized treatment have long-term consequences on the overall health outcomes of current patients.”

In other words, lack of medical care and worse cancer rates will not only continue to disproportionately affect Gazans compared to Israelis, but conditions will undoubtedly deteriorate significantly more. And such predictions don’t even take into account the fact that war itself causes cancer, painting an even bleaker picture of the medical future for Palestinians in Gaza. 

The Case of Fallujah

When the Second Battle of Fallujah, part of America’s nightmarish war in Iraq, ended in December 2004, the embattled city was a toxic warzone, contaminated with munitions, depleted uranium (DU), and poisoned dust from collapsed buildings. Not surprisingly, in the years that followed, cancer rates increased almost exponentially there. Initially, doctors began to notice that more cancers were being diagnosed. Scientific research would soon back up their observations, revealing a startling trend.

In the decade after the fighting had mostly ended, leukemia rates among the local population skyrocketed by a dizzying 2,200%. It was the most significant increase ever recorded after a war, exceeding even Hiroshima’s 660% rise over a more extended period of time. One study later tallied a fourfold increase in all cancers and, for childhood cancers, a twelvefold increase.

The most likely source of many of those cancers was the mixture of DU, building materials, and other leftover munitions. Researchers soon observed that residing inside or near contaminated sites in Fallujah was likely the catalyst for the boom in cancer rates.

“Our research in Fallujah indicated that the majority of families returned to their bombarded homes and lived there, or otherwise rebuilt on top of the contaminated rubble of their old homes,” explained Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist who studied the health impacts of war in Fallujah. “When possible, they also used building materials that were salvaged from the bombarded sites. Such common practices will contribute to the public’s continuous exposure to toxic metals years after the bombardment of their area has ended.”

While difficult to quantify, we do have some idea of the amount of munitions and DU that continues to plague that city. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United States fired between 170 and 1,700 tons of tank-busting munitions in Iraq, including Fallujah, which might have amounted to as many as 300,000 rounds of DU. While only mildly radioactive, persistent exposure to depleted uranium has a cumulative effect on the human body. The more you’re exposed, the more the radioactive particles build up in your bones, which, in turn, can cause cancers like leukemia.

With its population of 300,000, Fallujah served as a military testing ground for munitions much like those that Gaza endures today. In the short span of one month, from March 19 to April 18, 2003, more than 29,199 bombs were dropped on Iraq, 19,040 of which were precision-guided, along with another 1,276 cluster bombs. The impacts were grave. More than 60 of Fallujah’s 200 mosques were destroyed, and of the city’s 50,000 buildings, more than 10,000 were imploded and 39,000 damaged. Amid such destruction, there was a whole lot of toxic waste. As a March 2025 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project noted, “We found that the environmental impact of warfighting and the presence of heavy metals are long-lasting and widespread in both human bodies and soil.”

Exposure to heavy metals is distinctly associated with cancer risk. “Prolonged exposure to specific heavy metals has been correlated with the onset of various cancers, including those affecting the skin, lungs, and kidneys,” a 2023 report in Scientific Studies explains. “The gradual buildup of these metals within the body can lead to persistent toxic effects. Even minimal exposure levels can result in their gradual accumulation in tissues, disrupting normal cellular operations and heightening the likelihood of diseases, particularly cancer.”

And it wasn’t just cancer that afflicted the population that stuck around or returned to Fallujah. Infants began to be born with alarming birth defects. A 2010 study found a significant increase in heart ailments among babies there, with rates 13 times higher and nervous system defects 33 times higher than in European births.

“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Dr Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, who co-authored the birth-defect study, told Al Jazeera in 2013. “We have so many cases of babies with multiple system defects… Multiple abnormalities in one baby. For example, we just had one baby with central nervous system problems, skeletal defects, and heart abnormalities. This is common in Fallujah today.”

While comprehensive health assessments in Iraq are scant, evidence continues to suggest that high cancer rates persist in places like Fallujah. “Fallujah today, among other bombarded cities in Iraq, reports a high rate of cancers,” researchers from the Costs of War Project study report. “These high rates of cancer and birth defects may be attributed to exposure to the remnants of war, as are manifold other similar spikes in, for example, early onset cancers and respiratory diseases.”

As devastating as the war in Iraq was — and as contaminated as Fallujah remains — it’s nearly impossible to envision what the future holds for those left in Gaza, where the situation is so much worse. If Fallujah teaches us anything, it’s that Israel’s destruction will cause cancer rates to rise significantly, impacting generations to come.

Manufacturing Cancer

The aerial photographs and satellite footage are grisly. Israel’s U.S.-backed military machine has dropped so many bombs that entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Gaza, by every measure, is a land of immense suffering. As Palestinian children hang on the brink of starvation, it feels strange to discuss the health effects they might face in the decades ahead, should they be fortunate enough to survive.

While data often conceals the truth, in Gaza, numbers reveal a dire reality. As of this year, nearly 70% of all roads had been destroyed, 90% of all homes damaged or completely gone, 85% of farmland affected, and 84% of healthcare facilities obliterated. To date, Israel’s relentless death machine has created at least 50 million tons of rubble, human remains, and hazardous materials — all the noxious ingredients necessary for a future cancer epidemic.

From October 2023 to April 2024, well over 70,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza, which, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, was equivalent to two nuclear bombs. While the extent and exact types of weaponry used there are not fully known, the European Parliament has accused Israel of deploying depleted uranium, which, if true, will only add to the future cancer ills of Gazans. Most bombs contain heavy metals like lead, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, and tungsten, which end up polluting the soil and groundwater, while impacting agriculture and access to clean water for years to come.

“The toxicological effects of metals and energetic materials on microorganisms, plants, and animals vary widely and can be significantly different depending on whether the exposure is acute (short term) or chronic (long term),” reads a 2021 report commissioned by the Guide to Explosive Ordnance Pollution of the Environment. “In some cases, the toxic effects may not be immediately apparent, but instead may be linked to an increased risk of cancer, or increased risk of mutation during pregnancy, which may not become evident for many years.”

Given such information, we can only begin to predict how toxic the destruction may prove to be. The homes that once stood in the Gaza Strip were mainly made of concrete and steel. Particles of dust released from such crumbled buildings can themselves cause lung, colon, and stomach cancers.

As current cancer patients die slow deaths with no access to the care they need, future patients, who will acquire cancer thanks to Israel’s genocidal mania, will no doubt meet the same fate unless there is significant intervention.

“[A]pproximately 2,700 [Gazans] in advanced stages of the disease await treatment with no hope or treatment options within the Gaza Strip under an ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, and the disruption of emergency medical evacuation mechanisms,” states a May 2025 report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “[We hold] Israel fully responsible for the deaths of hundreds of cancer patients and for deliberately obliterating any opportunities of treatment for thousands more by destroying their treatment centers and depriving them of travel. Such acts fall under the crime of genocide ongoing in the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s methodical destruction in Gaza has taken on many forms, from bombing civilian enclaves and hospitals to withholding food, water, and medical care from those most in need. In due time, Israel will undoubtedly use the cancers it will have created as a means to an end, fully aware that Palestinians there have no way of preparing for the health crises that are coming.

Cancer, in short, will be but another weapon added to Israel’s ever-increasing arsenal.

Joshua Frank, a TomDispatch regular, is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming Bad Energy: The Deep Sea Miners, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off Our Future, both with Haymarket Books.

Copyright 2025 Joshua Frank

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