David, you'd really have to go out of your way to inject political bias into a tactical game. Say if you add a rule in which you award VPs for the number of prisoners you manage to mutilate...
The real question is whether a strategic game on such a controversial issue as the First Arab-Israeli War could remain free of overt political bias.
Personally, dabbling on and off on a CDG design on the very subject, I think one can design a game in line with dispassionate scholarly research on the subject.
My design model does not shirk away from the whole refugee/ethnic cleansing issue. Deir Yassin etc critically weakened Arab morale and softened up local resistance (settlements are static units that may be reduced in strength on account of such morale blows).
Conquering an enemy settlement can lead to overall morale of your enemy being hit (especially so with Irgun etc units). And lower morale softens up static defences.
Distasteful as we may find this dimension of warfare, ethnic cleansing had a critical strategic impact on the war. Quite unlike say the Holocaust on WW2 or even the Armenian Genocide on WW1.
To my mind, you cannot design a historically accurate strategic simulation of said war without dealing with the matter of population displacement. Although my model deals with it in a more implicit manner. Anyone can picture for himself what the conquest-morale reduction-static defence softening represents on the ground...
BOTTOM LINE: I think it's possible to design a strategic game on such a controversial subject without injecting any political bias.
What however isn't possible, is to satisfy partisans of ALL persuasions. Some with kooky/extreme opinions are at odds with fact-based scholarly work. Big deal... Everyone else will respect at design hewing closely to scholarly findings.
Regarding ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE, that game has what in some way amounts to a political bias: It presents Israel as the clear underdog.
Historically, Israeli simply wasn't. It had superior resources and manpower. This is of course counterintuitive and certainly wasn't how the conflict was perceived at the time (in the less informed broad public, governments generally knew better).
A lot of political baggage comes with that David vs. Goliath narrative, so I'd generally describe ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE turning reality on its head as political bias.
That being said, that actually makes for the better game. You want a challenge, after all. So I don't sweat this and - if designing a solitaire game on the same subject - would have done the same. Game comes first, in that case, if you ask me.
But it does mean that ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE may be not exactly appropriate for classroom purposes, since it'd have a propagandistic effect in such a context.
I would be very interested to see a CDG on the 1948 War--if you're ever looking for playtesters, let me know.
I think your comments are thoughtful and "on the money"--although I should point out that AIW's tactical battles cover 1956 and onwards, when battles were between larger, more organized groups of units on both sides, rather than (what I understand to be) small-unit firefights of the '48 War.
I'd be interested to know what sources you're using, particularly to substantiate the statement that Israel had superior resources and manpower. Granted, as I said, I was raised on "David vs Goliath" but my understanding is that the British handed over much more firepower to the Arabs when they left Palestine than they did to the Palmach/Haganah--not to mention tactical and strategic advantages (high grounds, forts, etc). If you have the names of any books with good info, send them along.
I'd be interested to know what sources you're using, particularly to substantiate the statement that Israel had superior resources and manpower.
For starters, read the Benny Morris's standard-work on the subject. Though any recent half-decent scholarly work will give you the same findings.
It's well-established that the Yishuv/Israel had superior resources and manpower. Together with an excellent use of those advantages and an often woeful Arab war effort, it resulted in an emphatic Israeli victory.
It has to be said that it could have well played out differently. Never to the extent of Israel being pushed back into the sea, I think, but a lot could have transpired to lead to at least a less wholesale Arab rout.
It's those what-ifs that make the Arabs tougher customers in my design than they turned out to be. And similarly, Israel is unlikely to have such a great run either.
I think this makes both for a better game and better simulation. Ben Gurion simply was a terrific wargamer! Wouldn't be easy to match his play.
Benny Morris is/was a staunch revisionist historian - NOT "the standard work" on the topic. He was idolized by the anti-Israel factions in the mid-East and Europe as a result. Simply quoting him as an unbiased historian won't cut it.
Note that I'm not saying that the sources that disagree with him are necessarily correct, either. Everyone is biased. But Benny Morris was SO biased that he himself later recanted and now is on record as repudiating many of his earlier writings.
It's a pity that it's so hard to get any reasonable analysis of what went on in the various Arab-Israel wars because of the politics but c'est la vie.
I think Charles is referring to Benny Morris' more recent "1948", which I consider to be a real seminal treatment of the topic. It doesn't pull any punches and presents truth, but it also points out how the tragedy of the Palestinians was brought on as much by their leadership as the Jews and how the world (including the Jews of Israel) would've have been much worse off had the Arabs prevailed. It really changed my way of thinking about the conflict because it seperated out a Civil War that preceded the end of the mandate from the phases of the Arab invasion (something admittedly my game does not do).
Charles and I approach the issues of the modern Middle East from a very different perspective (I'll leave it at that). He understands how my treatment of the game wasn't meant to have a hard complexity level and, therefore, couldn't model all the nuances of the war. I still stand by it as an educational tool, because what is important in an educational treatment is not whether the simulation is accurate or it creates a better representation of how many men were in the field at a given time or their supply status, but that it shares a descriptions of the major events and presents a "feel" for the situation that Israel faced (surrounded, internal lines of control, uncoordinated Arab strikes, etc.). I would not say the fact that the Israelis lose most games (something done to encourage replayability) or that the Arab armies are stronger than they were historically (although I would argue that Jordan is depicted about right- they did defeat the IDF at every turn- I just was at Latrun in December) converts the game into "propaganda". In fact, I was very proud that, eventhough I am a strong Zionist, I was even-handed in my event approach, including Israeli atrocities and the Palestinian refugees.
Sandy is right that there is no accepted "objective" work on the topic nor will there ever be. I've read so much about it from all political angles- left, right, pro-Zionist, anti-Zionist, peacenik, militant, religious and secular. The point remains that the Israeli victory was amazing for a variety of reasons and simply saying that the Arabs weren't unified and didn't mobilize the strength they could and the Israelis were literally fighting for their lives doesn't undermine that thesis.
