Q: How was the database of people compiled? 

A: I posted a job listing on Upwork.com seeking someone to review a video library of street interviews and crop images to show only the faces of the interviewees. The source of videos was the Ask Project by Corey Gil-Shuster — a very interesting collection on YouTube that I recommend checking out.

The worker, based in the Philippines, was instructed to aim for roughly a 50/50 split between Jews and Arabs (easy to tell because of captions on the videos), and to avoid people with obvious cultural signifiers such as hijabs or kippahs. Every effort was made to ensure the selection was random and free from any personal bias or agenda.

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Q: Why are some photo backgrounds blurred?

A: During a soft launch of the game it came to my attention that about 10% of photos contained background elements (e.g., signs in Hebrew or Arabic) that influenced players’ guesses. I decided to blur the backgrounds to avoid any unintended cues, rather than removing the photos entirely, which would’ve compromised the original randomness of the database. 

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Q: What percentage do most players get right?

A: The average score is about 62%. Considering that blind guessing would yield around 50%, this suggests that most players are only slightly better than random chance at distinguishing Israeli Jews from Palestinians.

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Q: What does this mean?

A: It highlights the complexity of the conflict, and how badly the western liberal narrative oversimplifies it.

There’s a tendency among Western liberals to frame this as a classic struggle of “colonizer vs. colonized” or “white vs. brown,” but the reality is far more nuanced. Jews and Palestinians both have deep ties to this land and, in many cases, to each other. Recognizing these shared roots — particularly by outside actors — could help reach peaceful cohabitation in the land.

For perspective:

If a similar game were created using South Africans Vs. Afrikaners or American Indians Vs. the families who arrived on the Mayflower , it would be very easy to distinguish the colonizers from the indigenous population nearly 100% of the time. That’s not the case here, because this conflict does not fit that mold, no matter how badly some wish it did.

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Expanding further:

Genetically, Jews are predominantly Levantine in origin. A 2,000 year long diaspora introduced some admixture — roughly 50% Levantine and 50% from host populations — which influenced both genotype and phenotype. Ashkenazi Jews, for instance, appear “whiter” due to European admixture, while Mizrahi Jews reflect Middle Eastern ancestry, but their cultural and historical roots remain unmistakably Judean and Israeli.

Palestinians, too, are overwhelmingly Levantine in origin. Over centuries, they adopted new religious and cultural identities and absorbed migrations from the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, southern Europe, and Mesopotamia. Still, their genetic base remains largely local, and in many cases, closely related to ancient Judeans.

In short: The idea of “white Jew vs. brown Palestinian” is a myth, often weaponized to manipulate Western guilt over colonial history. Understanding that this conflict is between two populations of closely shared origins — separated and then rejoined by the tides of history — could help foster more realistic and hopeful paths to peace.