That was my first reaction to the news that J Street U — the campus organizing arm of J Street, run and staffed directly by the J Street Education Fund — co-sponsored this past weekend’s College Democrats of America convention in Washington, a convention whose “surprise speaker” turned out to be Hasan Piker.

For readers who don’t spend their lives on Twitch: Piker is the nephew of Cenk Uygur, CEO and founder of The Young Turks (TYT), a political network that has veered into explicit antisemitism in recent years. Piker began his career streaming for TYT in 2016 and started his own Twitch channel in 2018, streaming full-time by January 2020.

Piker’s Twitch account has been suspended on multiple occasions for violating the platform’s policies, such as for using the phrase “Zionist pig” on a livestream. In March 2026, on a nationally syndicated radio show, he said Israel “does not have a right to exist” and compared the Jewish state to Nazi Germany. He has called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” said Hamas is “1,000 times” better than the Israeli government, and declared that America deserved 9/11.

Let us understand the full depth and breadth of Hasan Piker’s reach. He was booked at The New Yorker Festival and........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)