There is a coordinated smear campaign against the leftist streamer Hasan Piker by the Democratic Party establishment over Israel’s US-armed and facilitated genocide against the Palestinian people.
The bottom line about what’s happening here is this: the American people have turned against Israel in revulsion at the genocide and want to stop facilitating its crimes. That opposition is overwhelming among the Democratic rank-and-file. But the Democratic Party establishment remains invested in the alliance with Israel – and they fear being swept aside by pro-Palestinian left-wing candidates in upcoming primaries.
So their response is to smear pro-Palestinian figures – in this case, to try to toxify Hasan Piker and nullify his ability to mobilise grassroots supporters to help progressive candidates win Democratic primaries.
They also clearly want to destroy the chances of progressive candidates like Abdul el-Sayed, who is standing for the Senate in Michigan, even if that destroys the Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate – so they can say: look, if you select progressive candidates, they will lose against the Republicans. The aim is to deter other voters from following that example.
The Democratic Party establishment – like the rest of the pro-Israel faction which dominates the US political elite – knows it has lost the argument. They know they have lost public opinion. They know they have lost their base. So, to stay in control, they are resorting to fear, smear and lies.
What Hasan Piker actually said
The smear against Hasan Piker which Democratic bigwigs are promoting is that he has threatened Jewish Americans with violence if they don’t stop supporting Israel, and that he is antisemitic. It rests on a total, wilful and deceitful distortion of what he has said.
We’re going to go through what’s going on here. Let’s start by listening to what he said. Here’s the first clip, in which he was responding to an anti-Zionist Jewish follower of his.
What he’s saying here is that US public opinion has dramatically shifted against Israel – and that this has happened despite the efforts of the Western political and media elite. The latest polling, at the end of July, shows that 55% of Americans have an unfavourable view of Israel, with just 31% having a favourable view. That same pollster, back in March 2025, had Americans equally divided – with 43% favourable and 43% unfavourable.
Among Democrats, that unfavourability is overwhelming. But even among Republicans under the age of 30, 58% had unfavourable views of Israel, compared with 29% who had favourable views.
The polling also found that 52% thought the US gave too much military aid to Israel, while another poll by YouGov found that 44% of Americans thought the US shouldn’t send military aid to Israel, compared with just a third who said it should.
The polling has also found that half of registered American voters think Israel has committed genocide, while 35% believe it has not.
Despite the political and media elite being united behind Israel, the American people have decided they’ve seen quite enough mass slaughter and atrocities against innocent people, thank you very much, and they are done with Israel.
So Hasan Piker is making an argument against conflation. He is arguing that conflating Jewish people with a state whose crimes have repulsed the American people is obviously going to drive antisemitism, and therefore put Jewish people in danger – something he does not want Jewish people to face. He is arguing that this conflation is a threat to Jewish safety.
Indeed, it should be noted that polling also finds that more than six in ten Jewish Americans think Israel has committed war crimes, about four in 10 believe it has committed genocide, rising to 50% among Jewish Americans under 35. Another poll also finds that around half of Jews under 35 want to replace Israel altogether with a binational state with equal rights for all.
So the conflation of Israel and its crimes with Jewish people – promoted by the pro-Israel lobby – is endangering Jewish people based on a lie. Because people who express views about Israel which are common among Jewish Americans are smeared as antisemites.
The point Hasan Piker is making is that Jewish Americans do not prioritise Israel in their voting habits, but they do prioritise antisemitism, quite understandably, and the pro-Israel lobby is trying to manipulate that concern to build support for Israel. He’s arguing specifically for a demarcation between Jewish people and the State of Israel and its crimes.
It’s fundamentally the same point made by Ezra Klein, a mainstream Jewish liberal columnist for the New York Times, who said:
“Anti-Zionism is rising as a response to what Israel is doing. It will simply not be possible to treat it as a marginal viewpoint that can be shamed or shunned into invisibility. Yes, antisemitism often cloaks itself in anti-Zionism. So don’t do the antisemites’ work for them. If you keep telling people that if they oppose the Jewish state then they must hate the Jewish people, eventually, they will believe you.”
Is this really ‘victim blaming’?
Now, obviously, anti-Zionism – opposition to an ethno-nationalism which strips the rights of Palestinians and indeed subjects them to genocide – is not antisemitism. What is absolutely true is that antisemites seeking to recruit people are helped if the argument is routinely made that opposing Israel’s crimes means you hate Jewish people.
The argument here is that this is victim blaming – which is total nonsense.
Look, it’s basic common sense that, say, the September 11 attacks increased Islamophobia. Should they have done? No. Did Islamophobes use the attacks to incite anti-Muslim hatred? Yes. Do we need to aggressively oppose the hateful efforts by Islamophobes to whip up hatred of Muslims because of terrorist attacks like 9/11? Yes, absolutely.
It remains the case that those attacks increased anti-Muslim hatred, and everybody knows that.
The difference is that the 9/11 attacks were not armed and backed by the US government, with a media and political elite vilifying anyone who opposed those attacks as anti-Muslim bigots. Imagine if that was the case!
Let’s listen to this other clip, in which he discusses the pro-Israel Democratic congressional candidate who has refused to endorse Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed.
In this clip, what Hasan Piker is doing is again opposing the conflation of Jewish people and Israel, and arguing instead for a demarcation between Jewish people and Israel.
What about the ISIS comparison?
Some of the contrived anger has arisen because of the comparison between Israel and ISIS.
Let me just pick one quote – there are so many others – from Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister and a key member of the Israeli government. He said:
“For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn.”"
Is it fair to make a comparison with ISIS there? Yes, it obviously is.
What about the UN independent commission which this year concluded that Israel was deliberately targeting children – up to and including deliberately shooting kids in the head and chest in order to kill them – backed up by testimonies from dozens of US-based medics who served in Gaza?
Or indeed the leading British surgeon, Dr. Nick Maynard, who testified that Israeli soldiers were shooting different parts of the bodies of Palestinian children on different days – one day the head, the next day the chest, the next day the genitalia, and so on.
Does that sound like ISIS to you? I’d say it does.
What about deliberately destroying hospitals?
What about deliberately blowing up ambulances and medical staff, including with double-tap strikes where there’s an attack on civilians, and then the Israeli army waits until medical staff arrive to attack again?
What about systematically attacking mosques and churches?
What about destroying up universities, libraries and archives?
What about destroying ancient monuments?
I could go on.
Don’t want to be compared to ISIS? Then don’t act like ISIS.
The Democratic pile-on
Let’s go through some of the coordinated messages from the Democratic Party establishment.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Minority Leader, posted:
“The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and antisemitic.
There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate.
We will fight the cancer of antisemitism with the fierce urgency of now.”
A deceitful distortion of what Hasan Piker said. Piker opposes these threats and this violence, and he is arguing against the cause of it.
US Senator Cory Booker denounced what he called Hasan Piker’s “dangerous and hateful language”, again claiming that Piker was saying Jewish Americans were responsible for hatred and violence, and arguing he was stoking hatred against our neighbours – the opposite of what Piker was doing.
Congressman Josh Gottheimer insanely claimed Hasan Piker’s comments were “sick, wrong and straight out of the Nazi playbook”.
We could go on – and I’ll explain what the Democratic Party establishment is up to.
But as Pastor Ben Dixon says:
“There is no question that the Democratic Party Establishment has coordinated more attacks on Hasan Piker than they have coordinated opposition to Donald Trump and his destruction of the Republic.”
Just a fact: this weak, pathetic party Establishment lay back and did nothing while Trump’s Republicans rampaged across an already deeply compromised US democracy. Yet it’s a left-wing streamer opposed to genocide who rouses them from their slumber and makes them go on the offensive.
Indeed, note that Fox News had 224 broadcasts in August mentioning Hasan Piker, compared with 44 broadcasts about the war on Iran. This is a Republican smear campaign which the Democrats have joined in on.
What fighting antisemitism actually requires
Dov Waxman, Professor of Israel Studies at UCLA, has some really wise comments. He says:
“In response to the outrage expressed over Hasan Piker’s recent comments regarding American Jews and antisemitism, which many have interpreted as blaming Jews themselves for provoking antisemitic violence because of their support for Israel, I feel it is necessary to stress some basic points:
We must unequivocally condemn antisemitic acts against Jews and not make excuses for those who commit them.
We also need to acknowledge that Israel’s actions fuel much (but not all) of the anger and hatred directed against Jews nowadays.
Conflating Jews with Israel has been promoted by antisemites, U.S. politicians, the Israeli state and its officials, and by major Jewish organizations and mainstream institutions.
We should also recognize that while most Jewish Americans do not support the Israeli government’s policies or the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, most Jews are emotionally attached to Israel and care about it, and it is wrong to require them to sever or disavow their connection to Israel in order to avoid antisemitic discrimination or be safe from antisemitic violence.
The fact that hatred of Israel can cause hatred of Jews and that Jews are being attacked because they are associated with Israel does not mean that Jews deserve to be hated or targeted because of this association, but it’s not victim-blaming to note that people make this association at least partly because the Jewish state itself and major Jewish groups outside Israel continually emphasize the connection between Jews and Israel and between Judaism and Zionism.”
This is really wise, nuanced stuff.
Antisemitism is a grave evil and it must be fought. Within living memory it caused the Holocaust, the industrialised extermination of six million Jews. And indeed, making Jewish people in the diaspora feel safe itself helps undermine the arguments presented by Israel as some sort of liferaft for Jewish people.
Part and parcel of this must be to demarcate between Israel and Jewish people – and we should emphasise that both antisemites and defenders of Israel are seeking to conflate Jewish people and Israel.
As Hasan Piker has said:
“do not let a coordinated republican smear campaign become ‘reality.’ my argument against the dangerous false conflation between zionism and judaism which in turn increases antisemitism is now turned on it’s head. zionism is not judaism. antizionism is not antisemitism.”
The Democratic establishment has lost its base
What’s really going on here?
Well, the Democratic establishment knows it has lost its base. New polling has just come out on the views of Democratic voters in the first six primary states. Take a look:
Completely overwhelming and decisive. The Democratic Party Establishment has lost its base – and that terrifies them.
So what have they just done? They just appointed Congressman Jared Moskowitz as Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. He is one of the most pro-Israel and pro-war members.
It is as deliberate and calculated an “up yours” to the Democratic base as it’s possible to conjure up.
They are doubling down.
What Hakeem Jeffries represents
Hakeem Jeffries himself has repeatedly travelled to Israel, including on many trips linked to AIPAC, the main pro-Israel lobby.
He has repeatedly justified Israeli war crimes. In 2014, he told a large pro-Israel rally in New York:
“When you live in a tough neighborhood Israel should not be made to apologize for its strength”,
adding that:
“the only thing that neighbors respect in a tough neighborhood is strength.”
He then co-sponsored a House resolution supporting Israel’s military response to Hamas.
He has repeatedly opposed conditioning US military aid to Israel, repeatedly voted to hike Israeli military funding, and voted down attempts to cut aid to Israel during the genocide.
And note how Hakeem Jeffries just privately met up with Jared Kushner, the unelected son-in-law of Donald Trump, to discuss who knows what (we are told it was housing, immigration, the cost of living and supposed areas of cooperation, but we should be sceptical if that was it).
The hatred they ignore
Meanwhile, there is constant hatred and bile promoted by the US right – without this pushback from the Democrats.
Take Laura Loomer, a de facto adviser in the court of Donald Trump, who just posted this:
“I don’t want Muslims in positions of elected office and I don’t want Muslims having financial ties to the GOP.
I don’t like Islam. If I could wave a magic wand, I would round up Muslims and deport them from America.
Most MAGA voters agree with me.
Good luck running for office and trying to convince the MAGA base that we need more Muslims in America.
Good luck.”
This is Nazi-like hatred – calling for rounding up an entire minority – and yet where are the coordinated Democratic attacks?
What this is really about
The truth is that the Democratic eEtablishment fears Hasan Piker because they know he can mobilise voters to replace them with progressive candidates, and they are terrified because they know they have lost the Democratic base.
They fear being swept away.
They want people like Abdul el-Sayed to lose in Michigan so that Democratic voters go: well, we’d better not vote to elect people like that, even if we agree with them, because otherwise we’ll let the Republicans win.
The Democrats would prefer to lose to the Republicans than win with the left.
They would prefer to keep facilitating Israel’s genocide and heinous crimes rather than win.
That’s what we are dealing with here.
And if it means destroying US democracy to defend Israel – that’s a price they’re willing to pay .
Supporting Israel is supporting genocide ,there is no other way to see it
I want leftist Democrats to recognize they live in America. Many if not most of us think Netanyahu is a war criminal. We give too much to Israel. But,
We lost Roe, we lost VRA, we have a literal Gestapo in the street.
Washington DC has been vandalized by the president you thought would be better for Palestinians.
We need to talk about Misogyny.