New Lotto Game: Name Next Pretext For Palestinian Violence

It leverages the expertise that every Israeli claims in political and security affairs, and lets them put their money were their mouths are.

Tel Aviv, August 17 – Israel’s lottery administration announced a new game today, in which players can bet on what various Palestinian groups will use as the pretext for the next bout of violence, and can win up to 2 million shekels (about US$500,000).

As the administrator of one only two types of gambling allowed in Israel – the other is for sports – Mif’al HaPayis runs a number of lottery games, including scratch-offs, Keno games, lottery-drawing-based games, and other games of chance. The new game Rutz LaTerutz, translates roughly as “Run for the Pretext,” and asks players to wager on various scenarios through which armed Palestinian groups will contrive to turn any apparent misfortune into the spark for riots, stabbing, bombings, or other attacks against Jews.

Rutz LaTerutz marks the first new game introduced under the tenure of Mif’al HaPayis director Uzi Dayan, a former general and politician allied with Likud. Dayan, a nephew of the legendary Moshe Dayan, brought his own experience in security matters to the post, and blended the two fields of lottery administration and security consciousness to create the new game.

“One of the challenges of command, and of management in general, is to try to turn a situation to your advantage,” said Dayan. “Another is using the skills of the people in your charge to full effect. In my current post I have limited ability to influence national security policy, but this body can certainly leverage the expertise that every Israeli claims in political and security affairs, and lets them put their money where their mouths are. In the process, the public gets funds for education, health care, culture, the arts, and other worthy causes.” Mif’al HaPayis distributes more than two billion shekels annually for such causes, according to public records.

Players will be able to choose from among forty different pretexts, including: Jews appearing on the Temple Mount; a fabricated water crisis; a staged killing allegedly perpetrated by Israeli forces; the death of a hunger-striking prisoner; the forced feeding of the same hunger-striking prisoner to save his life; a car accident in which a Palestinian child was killed by an Israeli vehicle and the accidental nature of the tragedy ignored; or myriad other scenarios, including an “other” field that will allow players to suggest pretexts they devise themselves.

Winning entries will be awarded a hundred shekels each, after which a drawing will be held among the winners for the full jackpot. The time elapsed between terrorist attacks will determine the size of the award: the longer the interval, the larger the payout, which will begin at 200,000 shekels and be capped at 2 million.

Dayan noted another advantage of the game over other current forms of the pastime. “The stock market tanks every time violence breaks out – this is a way to make such an unfortunate development lucrative instead.”