"We're Not Horses, We're Humans": How Squid Game Reflects Desperate Gazans' Lives
Several netizens have pointed out that Squid Game, a South Korean dystopian survival thriller drama, has a resemblance to what Israel is doing in Gaza. The Korean drama, created for Netflix, was developed into a nine-episode series, showing themes of unemployment and poverty and its extreme outcomes.
The series shows helpless and desperate people dragged to take part in deadly games to survive. The game is managed by a system that sets arbitrary rules and and the spectators watch the suffering as entertainment.
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According to the viewers, what is happening in Gaza is a real-life version of the internationally acclaimed Korean drama series. Contrary to the Squid Game, the Gaza situation is even worse, with more cruelty and devoid of any reward for the single victor. The eventual fate of those living in the besieged Gaza also seems to be death, with no escape, exactly as the Deadly Korean series depicted.
Once the participator enters the game, there is no comeback. A day in the Squid Game is like losing means death and winning means surviving only until the next round.
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A user on X, B.M, shared a snippet from the series showing a character standing still to escape the gunshot, reflecting the aid seekers’ fate in Gaza. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the IDF military had deliberately shot at unarmed Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza after being “ordered” to do so by their commanders.
Do you know this scene from Squid Game? Well, Israeli soldiers confessed to doing exactly that to aid-seekers in Gaza. Seriously. https://t.co/bg6KjtcSKh pic.twitter.com/tPw9Szbkzb
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) June 27, 2025
The Israeli soldiers have even confessed to cruelty, calling the killings not just isolated mistakes, but part of a pattern dubbed “Operation Salted Fish” — the Israeli version of Red Light, Green Light. “We shoot, they run, we shoot again,” reports Al Jazeera, citing sources. Due to the international pressure, the Jewish nation has even ordered an investigation into possible war crimes over allegations by some of its own soldiers.
Triggering widespread criticism against Israel, at least 549 Palestinians were killed and over 4000 were injured while waiting for food aid distributed at sites run by the Israeli-and United States-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in May this year.
Comparing the situation to the Squid Game, several users on social media noted that the Palestinian population is forced into an even more cruel and deadly game, with no fixed rules and tuning access to food into a daily risk of death.
The total blockage of Gaza by Israel also reflected the game in which participants’ lives are in the hands of the organizers with no way out. They control resources and offer food and money only to those who survive. Though the Squid Game has rules to get what participants want, there are no rules in Gaza. If people reach an aid center, they are under Israeli snipe fire, no matter what.
In the series, the death of people is depicted as entertainment for wealthy spectators, which, according to many, appears true in the case of Gaza.
Not just similar, but worse than the Squid Game is the situation in Gaza, with no rules, no chances of victory or escape, surviving to death after each day.
