Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
Leftist commentator Hasan Piker — one of the most influential political personalities on the internet — tried to justify Hamas’ recent murder of Israeli babies as “a matter of law” and “maybe” even “a matter of morality.”
While on the “Leftovers” podcast, Piker said, “This is going to sound very radical and possibly very violent, but this is a matter of law, and maybe even if you agree with this a matter of morality, Palestinians have the legal ground to violently seize back their own homes from the settlers.”
Piker vaguely invoked the concept of “international law” — which clearly does not allow for the intentional killing of civilian noncombatants — in an apparent effort to dodge publicly acknowledging what his rhetoric suggests: that he is OK with Islamic terrorists dismembering Israel children and beheading babies.
While debating his co-host, Ethan Klein, on the morality of designating Israeli babies as “militants,” Piker insisted, “There are baby settlers as well — there are babies in the settlements.”
“The other school of thought here is that all matter of Israelis living [in] Israel proper are also [settlers] in the eyes of some,” Piker continued. “I do not agree with that because I don’t think that that is a reasonable solution, and it’s not realistic anyway, and that only will lead to the complete evisceration of Palestinians, and far-right Israelis will use that to continuously radicalize regular Israeli citizens in their endless bombing campaigns and ethnic cleansing campaigns.”
When Klein said it was evil that another leftist podcaster defended the murder and decapitation of Israeli civilians, including babies, by arguing that the victims were not civilians but occupiers, Piker said, “I’d have a different opinion on the matter” if the year were 1949, but “you can’t say that in 2023.”
Throughout the podcast, Piker defended leftists going to bat for Hamas online as “nothing in comparison to [Israel’s] multibillion-dollar [media] operation.”
As of October, Piker is the sixth most-watched streamer on Twitch in terms of hours watched.
Previously, Piker was temporarily suspended from Twitch for saying America deserved to be attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, while reacting to an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” featuring Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw.
“This is so insane. America deserved 9/11, dude. F-ck it, I’m saying it,” he said.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.