Controversy erupted recently after a Dutch public television network, VPRO, began offering a downloadable game, The Settlers of the West Bank, with apparent anti-Semitic elements. The game is styled after The Settlers of Catan and has players mining diamonds and Dead Sea mud and producing textiles and bulldozers. But in the game, players can also use an “Anne Frank” card to expand settlements and a “Jewish stinginess” card to take resources from other players. The game’s instructions reportedly describe terrorism as the legitimate result of settlements: “Saw wood, and you get wood chips: Not everyone’s happy with the Israeli settlements. Least of all the terrorist.”

Originally, a VPRO representative described the game as “satire” and explained that “although the item ‘The Settlers of the West Bank’ could have done with some more delicate detailing, it is not fitting to earmark it as anti-Semitic.” Today, though, the organization removed the game from its website.

[via The Jerusalem Post]