Politics
Starmer bans streamer Hasan Piker ‘at behest of Israel’
Critics of Israel have long faced repression for speaking out in defence of Palestinians. In the latest example of this, the UK has now banned US streamer Hasan Piker from entering the country:
the uk has revoked my visa as well. all at the behest of israel. the west is betraying "liberal values" for a genocidal fascist foreign government. soon we will all become israel. https://t.co/UqQG1dogOI
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 31, 2026
Israel influence
Hasan Piker is a streamer on Twitch. He also uploads videos to YouTube, and is famous for content like the following:
As Piker notes in the following video, he was set to interview Jeremy Corbyn, Zack Polanski, and Yanis Varoufakis before speaking at the Oxford Student Union:
Piker has spoken at the Oxford Student Union before, where he said the following:
ironic because a year ago, i delivered a speech at oxford union about the dangers of conflating judaism and zionism & how this foments antisemitism. since then the government has arrested pensioners for protesting against israel and let iof war criminals roam free! https://t.co/C6f9poXFR3
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) June 1, 2026
Here’s one of the pensioners in question:
British police arrest a blind man with a walking cane in Trafalgar Square, London, under the Terrorism Act, for holding a sign reading: ‘I oppose genocide – I support Palestine Action,’ as part of a wave of arrests targeting hundreds of protesters. pic.twitter.com/CgcBKLXNRB
— Eye on Palestine (@EyeonPalestine) October 4, 2025
In a video he posted after having his visa revoked, Piker said:
Listen, I’m going to say something. This is a warning. I hope you guys understand the Western world and liberal democracy is a sham. And all of the supposed things that they claim to care about, they do not actually care about.
We are moving into a very different timeline. This is why I constantly reiterate that fascism is here, right? Like the administration trying to deploy subpoenas against political dissident in the United States of America or the UK, that’s like completely captive to the interests of of pro-Israel advocacy organizations. …
The Labor government is supposed to be the liberal government… and the American government is the right-wing government… We are we are in the 1930s era ,where I think that the administrations in both the UK and the United States of America – regardless of their supposed ideological differences – are absolutely moving as a uni party.
And things are going to get even worse from here on out.
Genocide-denying stooge VS Hasan Piker
One of the most prominent voices calling for Hasan’s ban was Labour MP David Taylor. We’ve reported on Taylor before, noting that he seemingly denied Israel’s genocide in Palestine as a vector to attack the Green Party:
Do you remember when the Green Party used to profess to care about environmental issues, rather than spout baseless antisemitic conspiracy theories? https://t.co/nGv0zFdB8k
— David Taylor MP (@DavidTaylor85) February 24, 2026
Taylor wouldn’t be the first to describe the genocide as an ‘antisemitic conspiracy theory’, and no doubt he won’t be the last.
Israel’s defenders have repeatedly insisted that you can’t call out the state’s crimes if they resemble historic antisemitic conspiracies. It’s a ‘get-out-of-jail’ free card, and we’ve seen it deployed in the most heinous ways imaginable since the genocide began:
BREAKING: Israel dismisses IDF top lawyer Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi for leaking video of Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian.
Minister of Defense of Israel Israel Katz threatens her with 'imprisonment for many years" & calls her actions "a grave blood libel against heroic IDF… pic.twitter.com/YpPpdlYSs7
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) May 26, 2026
Before Piker’s ban, Taylor said:
It’s shocking that SXSW would invite someone who has openly supported a proscribed terrorist organisation and spouted these kinds of vile antisemitic rants to speak at their festival.
With the unacceptable rise in antisemitism on our streets leaving British Jews in a constant state of anxiety, Hasan Piker is clearly not conducive to the public good.
The “vile antisemitic rants” are criticisms of Israel. While we’re told its antisemitic to blame all Jews for the actions of Israel, the state’s defenders are happy to label all criticism of Israel ‘antisemitism’.
On ‘support for a proscribed terrorist organisation’, Taylor is referencing comments like the following (as reported by the Independent):
Last month, Mr Piker publicly stood by remarks made during an episode of Pod Save America, where he asserted that Hamas was “1,000 times better” than Israel and that he “would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”
Given that Gaza is in rubble and Israel is not, it’s hard to disagree with the maths here.
Also, do you know who supported Hamas in a more material fashion than Piker? That’s right – Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu – who notoriously said the following:
Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Israeli politicians made it impossible for the Palestinians to peacefully pursue liberation; the inevitable result of this was Hamas.
Establishment protection
There are obvious reasons why the British establishment has sought to defend Israel at the expense of its own citizens:
- The UK profits from Israel’s actions through arms deals and partnerships.
- Israel is a key ally of America, and the UK is America’s foremost lapdog.
- The Israel lobby has proven to be very effective at influencing British politicians – particularly through the ‘Labour Friends of Israel‘ and ‘Conservative Friends of Israel‘ groups.
- Once enough people within the establishment hold an opinion, mirroring that opinion becomes the price of entry.
Here’s what scumbag MP David Taylor said when it was pointed out how weird it is for senior British politicians take hundreds of thousands of pounds from donors whose primary interest is the betterment of a genocidal foreign power:
Absolutely vile. This person shouldn't be a member of any political party, yet alone it's deputy leader. https://t.co/TQ11164qLC
— David Taylor MP (@DavidTaylor85) February 23, 2026
Is there any way Israel can interfere in our politics that wouldn’t be considered antisemitism?
Oh, and to give a further idea of how preposterous this all is, look at how Fox News covered the Piker ban:
Fox News says Hasan Piker used a antisemitic trope by saying Israel advocacy groups pushed for his ban. And then in the following sentence details how said groups pushed for his ban. pic.twitter.com/skJb1os8pz
— Noot Noot
Zionist advocacy groups
Zionism is the ideology of Israel existing as an expansionist colonial state that serves as America’s foothold in the Middle East. While many advocacy groups in the UK and the US pose as being against ‘antisemitism’, the reality is they spend more time defending the rights of Zionists.
One of the Zionist advocacy groups calling out Hasan was Community Security Trust (CST). The group said:
Hasan Piker has a record of promoting rhetoric that includes antisemitic themes, denial of well documented atrocities and apparent support for extremist groups.
Once again, they’re talking about criticism of Israel. And CST has form on this, as Fréa Lockley reported for the Canary in 2019 after Labour revoked the press pass of journalist Asa Winstanley:
The Community Security Trust (CST) is a charity, initially set up to protect “British Jews from antisemitism and related threats”. On 4 August, it published a report called Engine of Hate: the online networks behind the Labour Party’s antisemitism crisis. This report stated:
the single most popular website for article shares about the subject of antisemitism, the Labour Party and Israel/Palestine was Electronic Intifada, a radical anti-Zionist website which has consistently promoted the idea that allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party are false, and are part of a smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn that is orchestrated by the Israeli government.
The campaign against the Canary
Here at the Canary, we’ve also faced attacks from pro-Zionist advocacy groups. As Paul Holden noted in his book The Fraud:
In 2021, Impress launched an investigation into the Canary alongside Skwawkbox, another independent, pro-Corbyn political website. Impress acted pursuant to a report published by Lord Mann, a vehement Corbyn critic and former Labour MP who was promoted to the House of Lords by the Tories. Mann’s report had accused both online publications of antisemitism.
The accusation was based, in part, on the research of Daniel Allington, an academic based at King’s College London. Allington was also ‘Head of Online Monitoring’ for the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) between June 2016 and September 2018.
As Holden also reported, IMPRESS cleared us, and:
It felt moved to add that those who:
disagree with the Publisher’s views on subjects such as Zionism may find these views offensive, adversarial or provocative but this in itself does not rise to the level of threat to, or targeting of, persons or groups on the basis of their protected characteristics.
Over in the US, Piker has faced a campaign which is nearly identical to what we’ve endured here in the UK.
The campaign against Hasan Piker
Piker has faced numerous attacks from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). As people have noted, the ADL seems to be much more concerned about anti-Zionism than antisemitism:
The ADL, which defended Elon Musk’s salute, and has never made videos like this about rightwing actual antisemites, is obsessed with Hasan Piker. https://t.co/IjQCxw9sCT
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 17, 2026
Piker himself has also observed this discrepancy:
asmongold is the largest right wing political content creator in the us. his view counts eclipse the daily wire. here he is, openly admitting that he’s a funnel for nick fuentes & his repulsive neonazi worldview & strangely enough the adl never tries to deplatform him. perhaps… pic.twitter.com/zxQ7vCrpTF
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 29, 2026
Explaining itself, the ADL said the following:
ADL has seen firsthand how extreme and demonizing rhetoric and ugly expressions of anti-Zionism can be the driving force behind antisemitic discrimination against Jews
Even if the above is true, maybe the solution isn’t to police anti-Zionism; maybe it’s to stop supporting a political project which necessitates the ethnic cleansing and murder of Israel’s neighbours in the Middle East?
White supremacy certainly gives white people a bad reputation, but the correct response isn’t to suggest anti-Nazis are the real problem.
In the past, the ADL has nominated Hasan for the position of ‘Antisemite of the Year’ alongside Greta Thunberg (!):
The ADL and donor group AIPAC have also worked with US politicians to try to deplatform Piker:
i mean they did this by way of adl and ritchie torres for like 2 years, now they got higher profile dems and republicans to lean into it because theyre desperate
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) May 4, 2026
After reading out a headline titled “Jewish groups call on UK to bar dangerous Hasan amid antisemitic attacks”, Piker said the following in his latest video:
[the UK government] did because Israel advocacy organizations have unbelievable amounts of power over what even the United Kingdom has to say and do. Yeah. If you’re an avowed anti-Zionist, your travel will be restricted. It’s totally ridiculous, dude.
Connections
Canary reporter Ranjan Balakumaran noted this is all happening on the same day that more Peter Mandelson files come out:
Another way of looking at this is that these are not separate stories.
Peter Mandelson is the godfather of Labour Together – the group which maneuvered Keir Starmer into power. As we, Paul Holden, and others reported, this included fabricating smears of antisemitism (including against the Canary specifically). Now, the government which Mandelson helped create isn’t just smearing its opponents with bogus antisemitism accusations; it’s barring them from the country.
Point any of this out, however, and figures like David Taylor MP will accuse you of being an antisemite. And in future, you may face consequences far graver than reputational damage.
Featured image via Amy Sussman (Getty Images) / WPA Pool (Getty Images) / Joe Raedle (Getty Images)
By Willem Moore
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