Hasan Piker: US deserved 9/11. Israel deserves Hamas.
People are probably going to yell at me for having this conversation,” Hasan Piker said from his livestreaming chair, midway through a video call with Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss his views on Jews, Israel and Zionism.
By “people,” Piker meant his own: the three million followers he boasts on the streaming site Twitch, where he opines about politics in between video game sessions for up to eight hours a day. That doesn’t include the many more who watch clips of his show on YouTube or follow him on X.
“People are going to say, ‘What are you doing? This is Jewish exceptionalism. Why do you care so much about making sure that Jews like you?’”
The 34-year-old New Jersey native, who has recently rocketed into the center of the Democratic Party’s identity crisis, then answered his own question.
“I still think that there’s value in reaching as many people as possible and helping them understand where I’m coming from,” he said, “so they’re not freaking out when they see their nieces or nephews watching me on Twitch, and then they think that their sons or daughters or nieces or nephews have turned into neo-Nazis.”
“That’s why I’m having this conversation with you, so that more people can hear something in the Jewish newspapers that isn’t just, ‘This guy is a heinous anti-Semite.’”
Piker is an avowed anti-Zionist who has said that “Hamas is 1,000 times better” than Israel and has said that “I don’t have an issue” with Hezbollah. He compared an Iranian-backed Houthi rebel to Anne Frank and likened liberal Zionists to “liberal Nazis.” And he reiterated to JTA: “I do still believe that Zionism is a racist ideology. Like, I genuinely believe that.”
The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt recently called Piker “one of the most outspoken, virulent anti-Semitic influencers in the world.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres wrote the heads of Twitch “to express alarm about the amplification of antisemitism on Twitch at the hands of Hasan Piker. He has emerged as the poster child for the post-Oct. 7 outbreak of anti-Semitism in America.”
Such criticism has escalated as Piker, a self-described Marxist and socialist, becomes an increasingly influential player in Democratic politics.
He joined rallies for a Michigan Senate candidate earlier this month and has hosted several progressive members of Congress.
Next month, he will appear in San Francisco with Saikat Chakrabarti, a congressional candidate who says Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
Piker’s influence is beginning to extend beyond progressives, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a 2028 presidential candidate, has said he would appear on Piker’s stream.
Speaking to JTA in his first extensive interview with a Jewish news outlet, Piker acknowledged that anti-Israel activism can morph into anti-Jewish rhetoric — but also said he can’t be responsible for what everyone in his movement says.
He says he wants to combat antiSemitism — in part because it undercuts anti-Israel activism. He condemned “heinous” violence against Jews, such as the Temple Israel attack in Michigan, but also says that American Jewish organizations fan the flames and create an atmosphere of “hysteria.”
There are signs that a growing number of Americans share some of his beliefs: that Israel is a malign presence in the world and for the US in particular; that the US should stop sending aid to Israel; and that Israel’s character and conduct explains the violence its people face from Hamas and Hezbollah.
As American Jews adjust to a new reality in which old norms about anti-Semitism and the US-Israel relationship are under attack, Piker says many Jews are on his side.
“There are a lot of young American Jews, at least in my community, who also feel this way,” he said. “They might be a little bit more shy about expressing their opinions in polite company.”
JTA spoke to Piker several days before the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and several cabinet members at the April 25 White House Correspondents dinner. Some, including the pro-Israel Jewish influencer Lizzy Savetsky, attributed the shooting to rhetoric promulgated by Piker.
Born in New Brunswick, NJ, to Turkish parents but largely raised in Istanbul, Piker got his start on his uncle Cenk Uygur’s web network The Young Turks. In 2020 Piker left the company and launched a Twitch stream from his home in West Hollywood that has outstripped Uygur’s influence.
Piker’s comments about Israel are nestled among hours-long streams that touch on a wide variety of topics he labels as anti-imperialist and anti-fascist. That includes criticizing America, which he has said “deserved 9/11.”
Yair Rosenberg, a staff writer at The Atlantic, wrote in a recent piece that Piker exhibits a “soft spot for left-coded expansionist authoritarian regimes.”
Rosenberg cited the influencer’s praise of Mao Zedong and lament of the fall of the Soviet Union, noting that “the tens of millions of victims of the Soviet Union went unmentioned.”
Rosenberg is currently engaged in a back-and-forth with Piker after saying the streamer mischaracterized Albert Einstein’s views on Israel, a symptom, he said, of a fast-and-loose approach to facts.
Piker’s hold on younger left-leaning audiences has alternately alarmed many liberals and made them envious. He is seen as one who can draw young, male, largely disaffect voters to the Democrats.
Piker has broken with one significant Jewish ally: Ethan Klein, a progressive YouTuber with his own history of incendiary comments, who used to host a podcast about the left with Piker. That ended shortly after Oct. 7, when Klein, who is married to an Israeli, sharply diverged from Piker on Israel. Today, Piker posts memes comparing Klein to Sen. John Fetterman, the Democrat who is very pro-Israel.
Several liberal pundits encourage engagement with Piker. Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the liberal Zionist think tank the Shalom Hartman Institute, disagrees: to welcome Piker means “embracing the changing of the goalposts in the acceptability of Jew-hatred in liberal societies.”
Chief among Piker’s positions is that the Democratic Party should become explicitly anti-Israel.
“If there was real expression of democracy in this country, yes, the Democratic Party would be the anti-Israel party,” he told JTA.
When it comes to his position on the future of Israel, Piker described his goal as “a secular, solitary state where everyone has equal rights and representation, Jews, Muslims, Christians alike” — a state that would come with the Palestinian right of return, a truth and reconciliation committee, and “some form of reparations.” But he was open, he said, to “a binational solution” in the region “in the interim period, even if it’s not the most moral from my perspective.”
He dismissed concerns that his vision would put Jews at risk; once Palestinians were fully integrated into the Israeli security apparatus, he said, they would simply have no further need for Hamas.
He told JTA that he sees himself as committed to combatting anti-Semitism, on his terms.
“Synagogues being attacked, painting swastikas on the side of Hillel buildings, all this stuff,” Piker said. “This is real anti-Semitism, and it’s horrifying for people to experience, because they’re like, ‘I want to go to my place of worship with my family, and now I’m worried that someone could just ram their car into it.’ No one should have to live like that.”
Yet he didn’t walk back any of his earlier statements.
Then there is the matter of anti-Semitism on the left. “It is undeniable that there has been a shift, for sure, where people, I think, are not as careful in their expressions in the way that they communicate on these issues,” he said. But he also described anti-Semitism on the left as largely a downstream effect of pro-Israel lobbying and American Jewish organizations that have “forced tying of Judaism and Israel.”
Was that also true for the self-proclaimed anti-Zionists who said that the attack on Temple Israel in Michigan last month was a legitimate target — or those who celebrated the murders of Israel Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum last year?
“I don’t believe that, by the way. I don’t think it’s a legitimate target, for the record,” Piker responded.
He chalked up left-wing anti-Semitism, in part, to it being “much easier to get Americans on board with just hating entire populations, than to actually be anti-imperialist, anti-genocide, anti-fascist, unfortunately.”
But then he again said the “biggest reason” is the downstream effect of pro-Israel lobbying — along with, as he puts it, “a lot of the Jewish advocacy organizations that claim to be Jewish advocacy organizations, but just simply are Israel advocacy organizations, like the ADL and numerous others.”
Young people upset with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, he said, are being taught by such messaging that they must be anti-Semitic.
Piker acknowledged that not everyone on the left seemed to think that fighting anti-Semitism was a moral imperative. “The attitude from some is, anti-Semitism is a problem — however, it’s nowhere near as large a problem as Islamophobia is.” When it comes to his fans, he said, “some people say, ‘Why should we care about this?’”
He was not one of those people, he insisted — even if, in his estimation, anti-Semitism is no longer “a systematic form of discrimination” in America the way it had been in the prewar period.
Piker believes his stated interest in fighting anti-Semitism sets him apart from anti-Israel streamers on the far right.
Ted Deutch, head of the American Jewish Committee, disagrees, and compares him to Nick Fuentes, the right-wing Hitler admirer.
Piker is insulted by the comparison to Fuentes. “Nick Fuentes, we both know, is a neo-Nazi. He’s a Holocaust denier, right? He’s horrible. His worldview is repulsive,” Piker said. “He’s not going to be able to get [ADL’s] Jonathan Greenblatt’s nieces and nephews to really reconsider their relationship with Israel.”
Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, warms about Piker because his praise of Hamas and Hezbollah is normalizing them for his audience.
“I don’t think Hasan Piker is offering a nuanced understanding. He’s celebrating them. I mean, his favorite flag is Hezbollah,” Segal said.
“He is giving them voice and legitimacy that I think many in the Jewish community are concerned about. Is that unreasonable for people to be concerned when they hear that type of language? I don’t think it is.”
Segal rejects Piker’s view that the ADL and other Jewish groups contribute to anti-Semitism, as when Piker said, “They’re fomenting more anti-Semitic tendencies amongst the population by consistently refusing to separate American Jews from the State of Israel.”
Segal said, “It’s like saying an oncologist causes cancer.”
The ADL monitors hate of all ideologies, and tracks and responds to anti-Semitic incidents, and conducts research into anti-Semitism.
Greenblatt has defined anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism — a move that reportedly angered members of his own staff.
Piker believes he’s far from the fringe of Democrats, and even Jewish Democrats, when it comes to his views on Israel. A recent survey from JFNA showed that about 7% of Jews overall identified as “anti-Zionist,” and that figure was twice as high for Jews under 35.
So he says he wants to build coalitions with liberal Zionists — the same group he has disparaged as “liberal Nazis.” Both his political hero, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and an up-and-comer he’s intrigued by, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, are Jews who have voted to condition aid to Israel.
That’s fine with Piker. He once said, “you shouldn’t even let someone be the [expletive] local dog catcher” if “they’ve ever exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel.”
He insists that, despite his strong language, he doesn’t see litmus tests the same way that some in his cohort do post-Oct. 7, as some have taken to freezing out “Zionists” from coalitions, not to mention public society in general.
“I’m a pragmatic person,” he said. “The way I see Palestine as a litmus test is not to say, ‘Oh, if you’re not fully on board with this, you’re evil and repulsive. And therefore I can never align with you in any meaningful capacity.’” Instead, he said, he looks for “people who have sympathies that I think don’t stand in the way of conversation further into a more productive place.”
He pointed to the reaction of young Jews he knew in Georgia who he said were outraged after more than 50 Jewish groups, including several synagogues and the ADL, penned an open letter criticizing Ossoff’s vote in 2024 to stop certain arms sales to Israel.
Piker is convinced that the Democratic Party wouldn’t lose its strong base of Jewish supporters even if it became a full-bore anti-Israel party. Liberal Jews, he thinks, would simply decide their other concerns outweigh Israel.
“At the end of the day, American Jews have American problems, right? And I don’t think Israel is as high of a priority.
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” he mused. “For many American Jews, they might even say, ‘Hasan, how dare you say this? You don’t know this. That’s not the case. It is very important for me.’ And then they’ll go and vote for American-related issues.”
He pointed to the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he had hosted on his stream, as a case in point: An estimated one-third of the city’s Jews voted for him, according to exit polls.
Fundamentally, Piker believes anti-Semitism is a distraction for the left. “If you see what Israel is doing to be a problem, as I do, and you want to solve this problem, you have to dial in on the actual root of this problem,” he said. “And I find that anti-Semitism, oftentimes, is moving people to focus on Jewish people rather than the actual issue itself.”
Isn’t he being disingenuous? After all, he talks about movement-building and claiming to fight anti-Semitism while also saying things he knows most Jews consider anti-Semitic.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, though he later added that he does “fully understand” why many Jews consider him anti-Semitic. “That’s why I’m having this conversation.”
He signed off soon after, popping up a few minutes later on his Twitch stream for the start of another session. His fans were tuned in already, waiting for him.
