After Piker comments, Democratic leader Jeffries says ‘zero justification’ for threats against Jews

US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, appears to condemn recent comments from streamer Hasan Piker, a prominent surrogate for leftist Democrats.

The far-left Piker, who has a history of anti-Jewish rhetoric, blamed Jews for antisemitism and called Israel the “Jewish ISIS” in a stream last week.

“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,” Piker said.

He also said that Jews were feeding into the antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty and that Israel was fomenting Islamophobia.

“You’re running around basically tying your entire identity to a country that inevitably will be seen as, basically, Jewish ISIS, and you’re saying, as Jews, ‘This is all we care about.’ You’re making antisemitism worse,” he said.

Jeffries says in a statement, The malicious claim that American Jews are inviting violence against themselves is dangerous and antisemitic.”

“There is zero justification for threats against the safety of our Jewish brothers and sisters at a moment of rising hate. We will fight the cancer of antisemitism with the fierce urgency of now,” Jeffries says, without naming Piker directly.

Jeffries is the most high-profile member of the party to have criticized Piker’s latest comments.

Piker has been a prominent figure in far-left campaigns for Democrats such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

Halie Soifer, the head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, says, “We can’t create a permission structure for the targeting of Jews due to the actions of Israel — which is antisemitic — and there can be no place for rhetoric normalizing violence in our politics.”

“All Democrats should separate themselves from Piker. He’s a gift to Republicans,” she says.