Democrats wish Hasan Piker would just go away. But he won’t and it’s their own fault. And declaring him to be a distraction that should be ignored, or condemning him without also disavowing their U.S. Senate candidate in Michigan who embraced and campaigned with him, won’t cut it.
Piker is back in the news because during a live stream on his popular Twitch channel, he said: “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”
How antisemitism works
This is a standard trope of antisemitism in which Jews are blamed for the hatred and violence aimed at them. In effect, he’s saying that if Jews continue to support the Jewish state and aid efforts to ensure its survival, they will not merely provoke the same sort of terrorism that was visited upon the Jews of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but will incur similar atrocities against Jews in the United States.
That this vile effort to rationalize, if not justify, violence against Americans elicited condemnation is unsurprising. Democrats like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Michigan Democratic Senator Elisa Slotkin condemned it. Even his buddy, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who embraced and welcomed Piker to join him on the campaign trail during his successful effort to win the Democratic senatorial primary, felt the need to distance himself from the comments.
Liberals understand that their chances of winning control of the Senate in the November midterm elections will be considerably diminished if they lose in Michigan as a result of this controversy. So, they are pushing for El-Sayed to disavow Piker and to make a better effort to appear as if he opposes antisemitism and understands why his candidacy has inspired fear among Jews in Michigan and around the country.
For them, it is simply a matter of political common sense. If a major party candidate for high office is being negatively affected by the extreme statements or actions of an ally, there’s only one thing to do. The candidate needs to cut off ties with the ally and move on, thereby supposedly proving his moderation and good judgment.
It is therefore frustrating for the national party and its many media cheerleaders that El-Sayed just won’t do that.
But the issue isn’t that El-Sayed is being either stubborn or prioritizing loyalty to his friend over the goal of winning the Senate for the Democratic Party. It’s that he doesn’t really disagree with Piker and thinks that anyone who believes that supporters of Israel shouldn’t be abused (even if not subjected to actual terrorism) has lost his or her moral compass.
The Dems’ Tucker Carlson
This issue bears some resemblance to the dilemma Republicans face dealing with Vice President JD Vance’s refusal to disavow or condemn his friend, Tucker Carlson. As I noted earlier this year, though there are major differences between them, Piker is the Democrats’ Carlson, only worse.
The similarities between Piker and Carlson are mainly centered on their common embrace of antisemitism and their ability to use their embrace of conspiracy theories to attract a broad audience of disaffected Americans, especially younger males.
Contrary to the instincts of liberals, who tend to think they can fix intractable problems with their enlightened discourse, Jew-hatred always is about the antisemites, not the Jews. And it always tells its target audience that the Jews are taking away from them whatever they value.
Carlson platforms preposterous conspiracy theories like the one according to which the Jews invented pornography to undermine American society. Piker does the same and, along with others on the left, appeals to those who want to believe the actual victims of a historic genocide during the Holocaust and intended genocide of Oct. 7 are the perpetrators of a fake one against the Palestinians. In each case, as is always true of antisemitism, the goal is to incite hatred for Jews, and now the Jewish state, in order to acquire power.
Carlson will be a millstone that hangs around Vance’s neck unless and until he specifically disavows him and stops acting as if he and the antisemitic groyper wing of the GOP are a necessary and welcome addition to the Republican governing coalition.
Still, there is a significant difference between the two situations.
At least for the moment, whatever their feelings about the vice president and the possibility of his becoming their 2028 presidential nominee, the overwhelming majority of Republicans has rejected the extremism and antisemitism of Carlson and his groyper friends. That’s been made abundantly clear in opinion polls and Republican primaries this year where candidates, including longtime incumbents like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), have flopped. Not to mention the fact that President Donald Trump has ejected them from the party.
But the opposite is true of the Democrats. Animus toward Israel, along with opposition to enforcing immigration laws, has become the organizing principle of Democratic politics. That’s why the emphasis on getting El-Sayed to disavow Piker, or to rationalize continued support for his Senate candidacy even if he doesn’t, makes it obvious that the problem on the left is far bigger than one obnoxious podcaster’s antisemitism.
Indeed, the trouble goes beyond El-Sayed’s own long record of antisemitic positions and troubling comments about violence against Jews, even while continuing to claim that he wants to protect them.
Over the course of the last year, growing numbers of Democrats and liberal pundits have embraced a raft of blood libels about Israel and the Jews. The big lies that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” in Gaza, imposed starvation there or is an “apartheid state” rather than the Middle East’s only democracy, have been widely embraced not only by extremist podcasters like Piker, but by vast numbers of Democratic officeholders and many, if not most, liberal pundits at supposedly respectable publications and broadcast networks.
Democrats have accepted the centerpiece argument of El-Sayed’s primary campaign about stopping the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby from “buying” Congress as a legitimate argument. Many, if not most, are no longer willing to accept campaign donations from it even if they remain supporters of the Jewish state.
Democrats may think that Piker’s comments justifying violence against Jews for supporting Israel go too far, which is embarrassing for them because he is linked to one of their main midterm hopefuls. But many, if not most, agree with the podcaster and his friend, El-Sayed, that there is something unwholesome or even wrong for Jews and other like-minded Americans to organize and seek to use the same tools employed by all advocacy groups to persuade voters to support their position.
The fact is that hatred for Israel—and the targeting of mainstream liberals for being insufficiently hostile to the Jewish state—has been a decisive factor in victory after victory in 2026 primaries for candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America or their allies.
Embracing blood libels
Democrats, including their leaders, like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are supposedly pro-Israel and concerned about antisemitism, have already demonstrated that they are willing to tolerate it if it comes out the mouth of a fellow Democrat like El-Sayed. Not even his invocation of traditional tropes—singling out Jews for opprobrium by mainstreaming blood libels about Israel, and claims that Jews are using their wealth to manipulate policy against American interests—was enough to get them to disavow his candidacy. Nor did his rationalization of a terror attack on a Michigan synagogue.
Nor should we have expected them to, since such hateful discourse has long since been normalized among political liberals in the post-Oct. 7 world, where Israel is now the main focus of hatred from the left. Anti-Zionism, which seeks to strip Jews of rights that no one thinks to wish to deny any other people, is indistinguishable from antisemitism. But it is now kosher among Democrats, rather than, as it used to and should be, a belief that should be relegated to the fever swamps of the far-left and the far-right.
Seen from that perspective, Piker is not a distraction from the real issues or a red herring being highlighted by Republicans to sabotage a Democratic candidate. He is entirely relevant to a key issue being debated across the country.
The willingness of Democrats to let their party be hijacked by a far-left faction and its allies whose hatred for Israel and the Jews is at the core of their woke belief system is the real issue. In so allowing—whether out of moral cowardice or a conviction that partisan loyalties and opposing Trump and the Republicans is more important than fighting antisemitism—they have created a moral dilemma for themselves.
The only way to salve their consciences is not by criticizing Piker or persuading El-Sayed to distance himself from him. It’s by disavowing El-Sayed and every other antisemitic candidate who camouflages his extremism by playing the part of a loyal Democrat who seeks to defeat Trump and all his works and allies.
If they won’t do that, they should stop pretending they care about opposing Jew-hatred and simply embrace their party’s new identity as the political expression of modern American antisemitism.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
