J Street welcomed Hasan Piker. That was a mistake

Say it ain’t so.

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 at the Yale Political Union earlier this year. As of this spring he commanded a combined audience of roughly 11.3 million followers across Twitch, YouTube, and other platforms.

What was J Street’s response? J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami told Jewish Insider that his organization was “proud to sponsor and participate,” that J Street “had no role in the selection of speakers,” and that showing up in rooms with people you disagree with is “even more important” than staying away — that failing to show up “would be an abdication of our responsibility to make the case for our pro-Israel views.”

Try this on. Imagine the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Zionist Organization of America, co-sponsoring a conference that featured Nick Fuentes as its surprise speaker.

You don’t have to imagine the outrage. You might even hope that the RJC or ZOA, having been surprised in such a way, might even make a public statement at that very moment, or even (and I know that this is awkward) simply walk out – as it to say: “We want no part of this.”

Now here’s the part that should really keep left-leaning Zionists up at night: Piker has a much larger and broader reach than Fuentes.

Fuentes has been de-platformed from nearly every major service and survives mainly on X, where he has roughly 1.2 million followers.

Piker’s 11.3 million followers span the platforms that young people actually inhabit. When you set that reach alongside the measurable growth of antisemitic and intensely anti‑Israel sentiment among Gen Z and young progressives, it matters a great deal. Hasan Piker matters—more than we want to imagine.

I have no need to score points against J Street. Quite the opposite. J Street has built its reputation on being pro-peace, pro-two-state, critical of Israeli government policy — and, crucially, still Zionist. J Street wants — needs — American Jews, including those well to its right, to accept that it belongs inside the Zionist tent. Moreover, whenever I have crossed paths with Jeremy Ben-Ami, I have found him articulate, smart, and amiable.

Here is the cautionary tale: The presence of Hasan Piker shows that it is far too easy for an organization that is critical of Israeli policy to wander into territory that is both antizionist and, frankly, antisemitic and anti-American.

I want J Street to survive as a serious institution, and sometimes institutions that want people to take them seriously need to say “no.” No, Hasan Piker does not belong in the room with us. No, we will not traffic with antizionists and antisemites, no matter how many social media hits they get.

A flat, unambiguous “no” to sharing a platform, any platform, with someone whose stock in trade is telling people that it is OK to hate Zionism, Zionists, and Israel.

I have spent much of my career defending left-leaning Zionism. But it has a membership requirement, and the requirement is that you actually defend the Z-word against haters, and that sometimes defending that word means standing up and saying: No.

J Street, and other left-leaning Israel advocacy organizations, cannot say that they are building a big tent for pro-Israel progressives and then let Hasan Piker walk in through the flap they left open, especially for a program aimed at the young people whom you would hope would be future Jewish leaders, opinion-makers, and political actors.

What should J Street have done, upon seeing that Piker was part of the program?

They should have said: “We had no idea that Piker was involved. We cannot be present with him.”

They should have walked out.

That would have been an opportunity to press the reset button – on a conversation that desperately needs it.