Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Elder of Ziyon
The setup is that a Muslim couple are trying to enjoy a nice dinner together - but an Arab man is giving them the "evil eye," quite literally. The goal of the game is to have you, the restaurant owner, set up partitions so that couples can enjoy a night out and "prevent nosy guys from bothering the couples while enjoying a romantic dinner. "
The company that made it, Baskalet, is based in Gaza, and they are part of a startup accelerator called Gaza Sky Geeks that encourages software development and other high tech startups. Gazans taking the initiative to find work in a world where physical borders are no longer as important is a trend that should be applauded and encouraged.
There are popular articles in Arab media, even in English, about the dangers of the "evil eye" on families and marriages. Traditional Judaism shares a similar belief.
But this game reveals more than that.
It shows that there is a problem of Arab men leering at couples, which is prevalent enough that this game resonates with the more than 50,000 who downloaded it.
See also this story of a Muslim couple forced to apologize after the man proposed in public to his burqa-clad girlfriend - and hugged her. They were forced to leave town because of the harassment.
