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A Berlin rabbi has been fired amid mounting allegations that he preyed on young women
BERLIN (JTA) — As a teenager in Berlin, Adelle was honored when a rabbi began showing interest in her spiritual development. Rabbi Reuven Yaacobov’s offer of personal instruction was an appealing prospect to the Russian-speaking immigrant with no documentation of her Jewish heritage.
Over time, Yaacobov’s private lessons escalated to phone calls and text messages and, ultimately, an invitation to a Shabbat dinner at his apartment, located so far from her home that she would need to stay over to avoid the prohibition on traveling on Shabbat.
There, Adelle was surprised to discover that Yaacobov’s wife was away and she was the only guest. After setting up the couch for Adelle, Yaacobov told her she needed a massage. There were points in her body, he said, where her energy was blocked.
He began with her back but ultimately told her that the points that needed attention — he called them chakras, a Hindu term, and sefirot, a term from Jewish mysticism — included her uterus.
“He said, ‘If I am not pressing it now, basically all that hard work I did’ – half an hour of hard work pressing on my back – ‘all that hard work is going to go to waste. If you don’t activate it all the way, it’s not going to work,’” Adelle recalled.
“I was very fresh to Jewish life. I didn’t know much,” she said. “I was not sure, but if it is a rabbi telling you that something is wrong [with you], you know, I kind of accepted it.”
After her formal conversion to Judaism, the touching escalated to pressure to have sexual intercourse, which Yaacobov said was permitted under Jewish law if he took her as a secret second wife.
He told Adelle that through her conversion she had absorbed the spirit of Batsheva, the Biblical woman whom King David famously spotted from afar and took as his wife — even though he had to have her husband killed to make it happen. Yaacobov said that only he, as a self-described descendant of David, had special powers to heal her.
When she balked, he told her that she would “stay a zero, just like you are now” and that her spiritual development would remain stunted.
“He made it very clear that I am a nobody at that point,” she recalled. “And, so, 19-year-old me, from not a very good family background — that was a statement that sounded true.”
Rabbi Reuven Yaacobov stands on stage with security guards during the ceremonial handover of a new Torah scroll that he had written to the Jewish regional congregation in Erfurt, Germany, Sept. 30, 2021.(Martin Schutt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Yaacobov’s hold over her was so complete, Adelle said, that when her Orthodox girls school announced that students could no longer associate with the rabbi, she rejected the warning.
“They summoned me to speak about that, and told me some horrifying things about him, and I was in complete denial,” she said. “I said, ‘No, no, it cannot be, he is a holy person. It cannot be, it’s wrong, you guys are wrong!’ I was fighting against them.”
That was in 2010. For years, Adelle told her story to no one. But eventually, she learned that “there was a whole team of Batshevas” — women like her whom Yaacobov had identified as vulnerable and groomed for sex, leveraging their naivete about Judaism to his advantage.
Now, Yaacobov has been fired from his position as the rabbi of Tiferet Israel, Berlin’s Sephardic synagogue, because of the alleged misconduct. His termination came just one day after Adelle and other women — organized by a onetime champion of Yaacobov named Elena Eyngorn — brought their stories to the Jewish Community of Berlin, the group that oversees most Jewish institutions in the city and employs some of its clergy.
“In view of the seriousness of the allegations, the Executive Board was shocked and outraged and immediately released Rabbi Yaacobov and finally fired him without notice effective May 31,” Ilan Kiesling, the organization’s spokesperson, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
He said Tiferet Israel would be “closed until the facts have been fully clarified” and that worshipers could pray at a nearby synagogue instead. He also said steps would be taken to prevent “such incidents in the future” and noted that a religious court, known as a beit din, might try Yaacobov according to Jewish law.
“The community has promised the victims unlimited support,” Kiesling said.
Yaacobov did not respond to JTA’s queries sent via Facebook messenger and WhatsApp.
Although the women and their advocates are relieved to see Yaacobov lose his pulpit, Yaacobov’s firing — which has not been publicly announced — is raising broader questions about the community and its guardrails. How could his alleged misconduct have gone unaddressed for years? Could someone have taken action earlier?
In fact, the Jewish Community of Berlin, the local police and an Orthodox rabbinical court in Moscow all received complaints about Yaacobov’s behavior with women in the past. The complaints predated the sweeping cultural shift around responses to sexual misconduct, known as #MeToo, that began in 2017 when the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of being a serial sex abuser.
“If Elena was able to do this in two weeks, to pressure the head of the community and get it done and get him to lose his job, how come all the powerful people that knew about it for years couldn’t take him down?” Adelle asked. “How come?”
Yaacobov has long been a popular spiritual leader in a subset of Berlin’s large community of Russian-speaking Jews. Born in Uzbekistan and ordained by the Midrash Sepharadi Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Yaacobov, 46 and a married father of three, also studied at the Moscow Yeshiva in Russia and the Shavei Gola Yeshiva in Jerusalem before being hired by the Jewish Community of Berlin 17 years ago, according to a biography that was removed from the organization’s website this month.
Inner view of Berlin’s Tiferet Israel Sephardic Synagogue, as seen in 2016. (MaorX via Wikimedia Commons)
In addition to leading Tiferet Israel, Yaacobov has worked as a sofer, or ritual scribe, as a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and also as a mohel, performing brit milah, or traditional circumcision, on male infants. Sources in the community say he has performed circumcisions since being fired from his synagogue position. On his social media accounts, he posts inspirational videos and notes in Russian.
“Never, ever let others convince you that something is difficult or impossible,” he wrote in a post last week. “When you know what you want, and you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it.”
The full scope of the allegations against Yaacobov is still unfolding. JTA has met with two women who say Yaacobov lured them into sexual relations, using pseudo-religious justifications, and spoken with a third who said she got away before he touched her. The women are being identified by pseudonyms because they asked that their names not be published.
Others told JTA they are aware of additional survivors. Eyngorn said she has spoken directly with nine, including the three with whom JTA spoke; new accounts continue to emerge, she said, as word spreads about her inquiries.
What is clear is that the testimony given to the Jewish Community of Berlin instigated immediate action — offering a sharp contrast to what happened at multiple other junctures when people raised concerns about Yaacobov’s behavior.
At least twice, women went to law enforcement but no charges resulted. In one case, Berlin’s top prosecutor declined to investigate the report it received, telling an attorney that because their client was a legal adult at the time of the incident and appeared to have been able to leave the scene if she wanted, there was no grounds for a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, a woman who left Germany for Moscow gave a statement to the rabbinical court there over a decade ago, according to Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, then the chief rabbi of Moscow. Goldschmidt, the longtime head of the Conference of European Rabbis, said he passed the complaint along to Lala Suesskind, then president of the Jewish Community of Berlin. He was not aware of any action taken in response.
Suesskind told JTA that she did not recall hearing from Goldschmidt but said she had received a different tip about Yaacobov’s behavior — which she dismissed as a rumor.
She said a Berlin rabbi whom she would not name had come to her with reports of sexual impropriety by Yaacobov during her tenure, which lasted from 2008 to 2012.
“I said, ‘Then bring the women to me.’ No one came. No one did anything,” Suesskind said. “I am someone who does not react to rumors and doesn’t spread them. I had no facts.”
Lala Suesskind, then president of the Jewish Community of Berlin, stands during a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the deportation of Jews from Berlin to concentration camps during the Holocaust, Oct. 18, 2011.(Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The turning point against Yaacobov came this spring after Liza Khurgin, a volunteer at a Berlin conference for Russian-speaking Jews held in March, raised concerns about his behavior following a lecture he delivered on the topic of “Kosher Sex.” She told JTA she had objected to Yaacobov’s “sexist” comments and left early — then began to get repeated messages from the rabbi.
“I don’t know how he got my Telegram contact,” she said, referring to a secure text platform. “He started to message me that I looked sad and someone broke my heart and he can help. He started to call on Telegram and tried to contact me again on Facebook, and I did not reply.”
She added, “It was not appropriate. It was very weird. You don’t expect a rabbi to act this way.”
Khurgin urged the conference organizers never to invite Yaacobov again. The organizers in turn informed Eyngorn, a former president of Germany’s Federation of Jewish Students who had nominated him to speak. Having known Yaacobov for years — he even performed her son’s bris — she was shocked.
“Before accusing someone you have to check,” Eyngorn told JTA. “I started to investigate and … realized this story had a much longer history and was more terrible than I imagined.”
Stories started spilling out, spanning years and all following a similar trajectory. Eyngorn said several women told her about how Yaacobov “groomed” them over weeks and months — after checking their age, gradually winning their trust and fealty, and ultimately swaying them to accept intimate touching and submit to sexual acts by claiming that a secretive Jewish court had prescribed this treatment for them or — in another variant — claiming that only he, supposedly a descendant of King David, could rescue their souls.
Twisted invocations of scriptures and religious law are common among sexual predators who happen to be rabbis, said Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual guidance counselor and rosh yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University in New York, and a longtime advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in the Orthodox world.
Blau recalled being consulted about a different rabbi who had been accused of abusing teens.
“They were people who at this point knew very little about Jewish law, and therefore it was possible for him to manipulate them to think what he tells them is permissible is permissible,” Blau said. “He is the rabbi who is bringing them into Judaism, defining Judaism in his terms, and that gives him a certain measure of control over them.”
While the two women who met with JTA were not legally minors at the time of the alleged misconduct, they described themselves in hindsight as impressionable and vulnerable.
Sara, who first came under his sway when she was 18, recalled Yaacobov progressing from lessons in Kabbalah and Jewish law to telling her how to walk, do her hair and nails in order to be attractive to men. The next step seemed to follow logically: photographing her in her underwear, supposedly in order to check her “chakras.” He also told her he was a physiotherapist, which further undermined her skepticism, she recalled.
Afterward, “I just left in a kind of shock,” Sara told JTA. “I thought something is obviously seriously wrong with me; that is why all of the things are happening to me that I find so difficult. So he will fix them, right? And this is the discomfort I will have to go through.”
In their final meeting, she said, he told her that a secret Jewish court required her to perform oral sex on him. He insisted he was only acting in accordance with her spiritual needs — while making her swear not to tell anyone because of the risk of consequences in the “spiritual realm.”
Estie was a bit older than the other women who talked to JTA, no longer a teenager, when Yaacobov started chatting with her after she attended a lecture he gave on family values.
She had been going through a difficult phase, having just ended a relationship. “He said, ‘I will help you,’ and he immediately started to give me advice on how to get a good guy,” she said. After they met once in public, he invited her for “training.”
From there, her story mirrored those of Adelle and Sara.
“He said, ‘Your chakras are closed, you need to open up,’” Estie recalled. Then, he invited her to his home. She was looking forward to meeting the wife and children he spoke of so warmly, and bought some kosher candy as a gift. But when she arrived at his apartment, she discovered she was alone with him.
“He said he wanted to give me a massage,” she said. “It was a weird, uncomfortable situation. I am alone with a rabbi in his apartment and he wants to give me a massage – a full-body massage. He said, ‘You should be more open, you should open your buttons.’”
Estie said she made up an excuse and left. “I did not let him do it. I got out with very little damage.” Afterward, she said, he called her incessantly.
“He said he can help me and I am denying his help, and he made me feel really bad about myself,” she said.
Estie said she had been able to cope with her trauma, in part by jokingly referring to Yaacobov as “Reuven the Masseur.” But she said she was “shocked” when she found out, through Eyngorn, that other young women had been in a similar situation to hers.
“I didn’t know that it was his hobby. I didn’t know he was so bad, that he did much worse things,” she said.
“I really trusted him,” she added. “I told him my story about my breakup and I cried. He looks for people who are weak or vulnerable at the moment. He told me, ‘I will help you.’”
Adelle, Sara and Estie were all immigrants to Germany from the former Soviet Union; about 90% of German Jews today have roots there. While Estie was exploring her Jewish roots on her own, Adelle and Sara were attending an Orthodox school created to serve young Russian-speaking women amid a broad push to connect immigrants with the Judaism they had been prohibited from accessing under communism.
Their profile — young, Russian-speaking Jews on the search for spiritual fulfillment — may have made them targets. “According to my humble understanding it is a matter of finding vulnerable people,” said Rabbi Zsolt Balla of Leipzig, who has counseled Eyngorn and some of the women as they prepare to seek redress in a religious court.
Rabbi Zsolt Balla speaks in a synagogue in Saxony, Germany, June 21, 2021. (Hendrik Schmidt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
“Someone who wants to groom people has to find the common denominator,” and in this situation, Balla said, “it was language.”
Shana Aaronson, the executive director of Magen-Israel, an advocacy group for survivors of sexual misconduct in religious communities in Israel, said it was significant that the rabbi’s alleged misconduct came as the women were being steeped in Orthodox Judaism, where rabbinic leadership confers power.
In Orthodox communities, “we are trained from an early age to do what the rabbi says,” Aaronson said. A predator’s “first step is an overstepping of boundaries, involving themselves in aspects of the person’s life that do not fall into the rabbi’s role: ‘Let me guide you and advise you on this, that and the other thing not related to their spiritual observance.”
Then, she said, they break down emotional boundaries, and ultimately give Jewish legal or “halachic reasoning for why what I am now telling you to do is OK or necessary.” Some will even bring texts to justify their actions, she said.
“Yes, we are taught that this behavior is forbidden, but it always comes back to the fact that the rabbi knows best,” Aaronson said. “It sounds absurd, but even a young woman who is educated is certainly not as knowledgeable as a rabbi. If he says in this case it is allowed, who is she to question that?”
When Adelle realized that she had been victimized, she apologized to her school’s administration for not heeding its warning about Yaacobov. She also began realizing that she needed to unlearn the twisted version of Judaism that he had taught her.
“I started to wake up and reevaluate everything he taught me, everything he said, ever,” Adelle recalled. “Three years of telling me things, three years of nonsense, along with Torah, along with wrong information, wrong halacha, wrong everything. It was like being reborn.”
The girls school was not the only Jewish institution to keep Yaacobov at a distance. ORD, Germany’s Orthodox rabbinical organization, spurned his bid for membership more than once at least a decade ago after a majority of members voted against his application. Their reasons are not public.
Now, ORD is hoping to take action to prevent harm to other women. Rabbi Avichai Apel, a board member, said the group wants to convene a religious court or beit din quickly to adjudicate the claims of Yaacobov’s alleged victims under Jewish law.
A beit din cannot put someone in jail, but it can issue pronouncements that affect a person’s role in the community. It could “issue a public statement saying that [the accused] is not allowed to interact with women or declaring him unfit to serve as a rabbi,” said Blau, who has begun advising ORD about its handling of Yaacobov. “In effect he will have been found guilty.”
Rabbi and Torah scribe Reuven Yaacobov writes sections of a Torah at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, July 10, 2014. (Adam Berry/Getty Images)
The beit din could come to that conclusion, Blau and Goldschmidt said, even if the person facing allegations is not present at its proceedings. And unlike the secular legal system in Germany, Jewish courts do not differentiate between alleged victims who are older and younger than 18.
In Jewish settings, Blau said, “an accused perpetrator is responsible whenever he takes advantage of a power imbalance, irrespective of the age of the victims.”
Apel declined to comment on Yaacobov’s case specifically but said he said he knew that sharing testimonies with rabbis could be hard for the women.
“It is a situation that nobody wants to imagine for himself, it is so terrible, really terrible,” he said. “But unfortunately they have to speak about it.”
He also said he planned to talk with his own congregation about the subject of sexual abuse, to help them recognize and prevent it, and to support survivors.
Goldschmidt said the more witnesses who appear before a beit din, the more likely the rabbinical court is to find in their favor.
“When it is a story of one man against a woman, it is her word against his,” said Goldschmidt,. “But if you are talking about a whole line of people who alleged that a person has been sexually improper with them, in 99% of the cases [it turns out] that where there is smoke, there is fire.”
Eyngorn said that, in her view, the situation is not just a fire but a conflagration. In the days after Yaacobov was terminated, she said her phone rang “every second moment” with people angry that she had worked against him.
“Women from his synagogue were accusing me: ‘You fired such a great rabbi! We are women and it never happened to us!’” she recalled. “I said, ‘It also did not happen to me; that is not an argument at all.’”
Since then, she said, some of them have called back or written to apologize, saying that they, too, have stories about Yaacobov.
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Hasan Piker favors Hamas, is pushing Dems to be anti-Israel — and wants Jews not to worry about him
(JTA) — “People are probably going to yell at me for having this conversation,” Hasan Piker said from his livestreaming chair, midway through a video call with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency to discuss his views on Jews, Israel and Zionism.
By “people,” Piker meant his own: the 3 million followers he boasts on the streaming site Twitch, where the left-wing personality, from the same chair, opines about politics in between video game sessions for up to eight hours a day. That doesn’t include the many more who watch clips of his show on YouTube or follow him on X.
“People are going to say, ‘What are you doing? This is Jewish exceptionalism. Why do you care so much about making sure that Jews like you?’” he continued.
The 34-year-old New Jersey native, who has recently rocketed into the center of the Democratic Party’s identity crisis, then answered his own question.
“I still think that there’s value in reaching as many people as possible and helping them understand where I’m coming from,” he said, “so they’re not freaking out when they see their nieces or nephews watching me on Twitch, and then they think that their sons or daughters or nieces or nephews have turned into neo-Nazis.”
“That’s why I’m having this conversation with you,” he added. “So that more people can hear something in the Jewish newspapers that isn’t just, ‘This guy is a heinous antisemite.’”
Piker is an avowed anti-Zionist who has said that “Hamas is 1,000 times better” than Israel, has said that “I don’t have an issue” with Hezbollah, compared an Iranian-backed Houthi rebel to Anne Frank and likened liberal Zionists to “liberal Nazis.” And he reiterated to JTA, “I do still believe that Zionism is a racist ideology. Like, I genuinely believe that.”
The Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt recently called Piker “one of the most outspoken, virulent antisemitic influencers in the world.” The stalwart pro-Israel Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres wrote the heads of Twitch “to express alarm about the amplification of antisemitism on Twitch at the hands of Hasan Piker,” saying he “has emerged as the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America.”
Such criticism has escalated as Piker, a self-described Marxist and socialist, becomes an increasingly influential player in Democratic politics. He joined rallies for a Michigan Senate candidate earlier this month and has hosted several progressive members of Congress. Next month, the provocateur will appear in San Francisco with Saikat Chakrabarti, a congressional candidate who says Israel committed genocide in Gaza. His influence is beginning to extend beyond progressives, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading 2028 presidential candidate, has said he would appear on Piker’s stream.
Speaking to JTA in his first extensive interview with a Jewish news outlet, Piker acknowledged that anti-Israel activism can morph into anti-Jewish rhetoric — but also said he can’t be responsible for what everyone in his movement says. He explained that he wants to combat antisemitism — in part because it undercuts anti-Israel activism. He condemned “heinous” violence against Jews, such as the Temple Israel attack in Michigan — but maintained that American Jewish organizations are fanning the flames and creating an atmosphere of “hysteria.”
How does Piker reconcile the tensions and contradictions that radiate within his worldview? The answer is important not just because his influence is rising but because there are signs that a growing number of Americans already share some of his fundamental beliefs: that Israel is a malign presence in the world and for the United States in particular; that the United States should stop sending aid to Israel; and that Israel’s character and conduct explains the violence its people face from the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.
As American Jews adjust to a new reality in which old norms about antisemitism and the U.S.-Israel relationship are being shattered, Piker’s vision is one that, some warn, Jews will need to increasingly grapple with going forward.
Piker, though, says many Jews are on his side.
“There are a lot of young American Jews, at least in my community, who also feel this way,” he said. “They might be a little bit more shy about expressing their opinions in polite company.”
JTA spoke to Piker several days before the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and several cabinet members at Sunday’s White House Correspondents Dinner, an event that has prompted renewed concern about escalating violent rhetoric on both sides of the aisle. Some, including the pro-Israel right-wing Jewish influencer Lizzy Savetsky, have attributed the shooting specifically to rhetoric promulgated by Piker.
Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Turkish parents but largely raised in Istanbul, Piker got his start on his uncle Cenk Uygur’s left-wing web network The Young Turks. In 2020 Piker left the company and launched a Twitch stream from his Los Angeles-area home in West Hollywood that has now outstripped Uygur’s influence.
Piker’s comments about Israel are nestled among hourslong streams that touch on a wide variety of topics he labels as anti-imperialist and anti-fascist. That includes criticizing America, which he has said “deserved 9/11.”
Yair Rosenberg, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argued in a recent piece that Piker exhibits a “soft spot for left-coded expansionist authoritarian regimes.” Rosenberg cited the influencer’s praise of Mao Zedong and lament of the fall of the Soviet Union, noting that “the tens of millions of victims of the Soviet Union went unmentioned.” Rosenberg is currently engaged in a back-and-forth with Piker after saying the streamer mischaracterized Albert Einstein’s views on Israel; a symptom, he said, of a fast-and-loose approach to facts.
Piker’s hold on younger left-leaning audiences has alternately alarmed many liberals and made them envious. Some in the party have likened him to the right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson or even streamer Nick Fuentes, known for his praise of Hitler and attacks on “organized Jewry.”
He’s broken with at least one significant Jewish ally: Ethan Klein, a progressive YouTuber with his own history of incendiary comments, used to host a podcast about the left with Piker. That ended shortly after Oct. 7, when Klein, who is married to an Israeli, sharply diverged from Piker on Israel. Today, Piker posts memes comparing Klein to Sen. John Fetterman, the Democrat whose sharply pro-Israel views the left sees as traitorous.
But others see in him the potential to achieve an elusive goal: a “Joe Rogan of the left” who can draw young, largely male, disaffected voters to the Democrats through the force of his charisma and unfiltered opinions. Jewish New York Times columnist Ezra Klein recently joined several other prominent liberal pundits in encouraging engagement with Piker and said the streamer was an anti-Zionist, not a “Jew hater.” (Last week, Piker appeared on a Times Opinion podcast as a political commentator to argue in favor of petty theft as a form of political protest.)
Yehuda Kurtzer, founder of the liberal Zionist think tank the Shalom Hartman Institute, disagrees with Klein: to welcome Piker, he argued, means “embracing the changing of the goalposts in the acceptability of Jew-hatred in liberal societies.”
Either way, Piker doesn’t just want outreach; he wants to convince people of his positions. Chief among them is that the Democratic Party should become explicitly anti-Israel.
“If there was real expression of democracy in this country, yes, the Democratic Party would be the anti-Israel party,” he told JTA.
When it comes to his position on the future of Israel itself, Piker described his ultimate goal as “a secular, solitary state where everyone has equal rights and representation, Jews, Muslims, Christians alike” — a state that would come with the Palestinian right of return, a truth and reconciliation committee, and “some form of reparations.” But he was open, he said, to “a binational solution” in the region “in the interim period, even if it’s not the most moral from my perspective.”
He dismissed concerns that his vision would put Jews at risk; once Palestinians were fully integrated into the Israeli security apparatus, he said, they would simply have no further need for Hamas.
He told JTA that he sees himself as committed to combatting antisemitism, on his terms. In the conversation, he condemned some behavior that others on the left have justified or even celebrated.
“Antisemitism still exists. Heinous hate crimes still exist in the country, right? Synagogues being attacked, painting swastikas on the side of Hillel buildings, all this stuff,” Piker said. “This is real antisemitism, and it’s horrifying for people to experience, because they’re like, ‘I want to go to my place of worship with my family, and now I’m worried that someone could just ram their car into it.’ No one should have to live like that.”
Yet he didn’t walk back any of his earlier statements. (He has previously apologized for referring to ultra-Orthodox Jews as “inbred.”)
Then there was the matter of antisemitism on the left. When first asked about it, he acknowledged its existence, in softer terms: “It is undeniable that there has been a shift, for sure, where people, I think, are not as careful in their expressions in the way that they communicate on these issues,” he said. But he also described it largely as a downstream effect of pro-Israel lobbying and American Jewish organizations that he said have created a “forced tying of Judaism and Israel.”
Was that also true for the self-proclaimed anti-Zionists who said that Temple Israel in Michigan, attacked last month, was a legitimate target for a man whose brother had been killed in an Israeli strike on Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon? Or the ones who were celebrating the murders of Israel Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum last year?
“I don’t believe that, by the way. I don’t think it’s a legitimate target, for the record,” Piker responded. (On his stream the day of the Temple Israel attack, he declared, “There is no justification for f**king trying to go into a synagogue and murdering kids.”)
He chalked up left-wing antisemitism, in part, to it being “much easier to get Americans on board with just hating entire populations, than to actually be anti-imperialist, anti-genocide, anti-fascist, unfortunately.”
But then he again said the “biggest reason” is the downstream effect of pro-Israel lobbying — along with, as he puts it, “a lot of the Jewish advocacy organizations that claim to be Jewish advocacy organizations, but just simply are Israel advocacy organizations, like the ADL and numerous others.” Young people upset with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, he said, are being taught by such messaging that they must be antisemitic, and some of them wind up believing it.
“It creates an environment of panic and hysteria that serves the interest of Israel,” he said. “And I think it’s actually not beneficial to American Jews at all.”
He acknowledged that not everyone on the left seemed to think that fighting antisemitism was a moral imperative. “This will come across as, maybe, messed up,” he prefaced. “But the attitude from some is, antisemitism is a problem — however, it’s nowhere near as large a problem as Islamophobia is.” When it comes to his fans, he said, “some people say, ‘Why should we care about this?’”
He was not one of those people, he insisted — even if, in his estimation, antisemitism is no longer “a systematic form of discrimination” in America the way it had been in the prewar period.
Piker believes his stated interest in fighting antisemitism sets him apart from anti-Israel streamers on the far right — including Fuentes, the avowed white supremacist and Hitler fan, to whom a growing number of Jewish and political figures are comparing him.
“In Piker’s case, his record speaks for itself, the same with Nick Fuentes. I don’t need to go into details about who they are or what they represent,” Ted Deutch, head of the American Jewish Committee, told Jewish Insider last month. “Neither one of them belongs in the middle of the political process as a result of candidates choosing to put them there.”
Piker is insulted by the comparison to Fuentes. He thinks Jewish groups consider him a threat precisely because he’s not Fuentes. That means, he said, that they may see him as a more persuadable, rational influence on young Jews.
“Nick Fuentes, we both know, is a neo-Nazi. He’s a Holocaust denier, right? He’s horrible. His worldview is repulsive,” Piker said. “He’s not going to be able to get Jonathan Greenblatt’s nieces and nephews to really reconsider their relationship with Israel.”
An ADL official sharply disputed Piker’s characterization. The organization is warning about Piker, said Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence, because his praise of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah is normalizing them for his audience.
“I don’t think Hasan Piker is offering a nuanced understanding. He’s celebrating them. I mean, his favorite flag is Hezbollah,” Segal said. “He is giving them voice and legitimacy that I think many in the Jewish community are concerned about. Is that unreasonable, for people to be concerned when they hear that type of language? I don’t think it is.”
Segal also rejected the claim that the ADL and other Jewish groups were contributing to antisemitism, as when Piker said, “They’re fomenting more antisemitic tendencies amongst the population by consistently refusing to separate American Jews from the State of Israel.”
Segal said that view “ignores the various ways in which we’re combatting antisemitism every day.” He added, “It’s like saying an oncologist causes cancer.”
The ADL monitors hate of all ideologies, tracks and responds to antisemitic incidents, and conducts research into antisemitism. But the group has also pulled back on some civil rights work following criticism from the right, and Greenblatt has defined anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism — a move that reportedly angered members of his own staff, some of whom quit the organization over what they said was its overt emphasis on pro-Israel advocacy.
But Piker believes he’s far from the fringe of sentiments among Democrats, and even Jewish Democrats, when it comes to his views on Israel. There is evidence of discontent on that front: A recent survey from the Jewish Federations of North America showed that about 7% of Jews overall identified as “anti-Zionist,” almost as many as tell pollsters they are Orthodox, and that figure was twice as high for Jews under 35.
To that end, he said, he wants to build coalitions with liberal Zionists — the same group he has disparaged as “liberal Nazis.” Both his political hero, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and an up-and-comer he’s intrigued by, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, are Jews who have voted to condition aid to Israel even as they are broadly supportive of a two-state solution.
That’s fine with Piker — despite the fact that he once said “you shouldn’t even let someone be the f**king local dog catcher” if “they’ve ever exhibited any sort of positive feelings about the state of Israel.”
He told JTA he likes the stances that politicians like Sanders and Ossoff have taken to move the dialogue on the issue. He insists that, despite his strong language, he doesn’t see litmus tests the same way many in his cohort do post-Oct. 7, as more and more on the left have taken to freezing out “Zionists” from coalitions, not to mention public society in general.
“I’m a pragmatic person,” he said. “The way I see Palestine as a litmus test is not to say, ‘Oh, if you’re not fully on board with this, you’re evil and repulsive. And therefore I can never align with you in any meaningful capacity.’” Instead of insisting on anti-Zionists, he said, he looks for “people who have sympathies that I think don’t stand in the way of conversation further into a more productive place.”
He pointed to the reaction of young Jews he knew in Georgia who were outraged after more than 50 Jewish groups, including several synagogues and the ADL, penned an open letter criticizing Ossoff’s vote in 2024 to stop certain arms sales to Israel.
“There are people who are like, ‘What is this? This doesn’t represent me at all. Why are you using my name? Why are you using my religion to take this stance that I find to be unconscionable?’” he said.
Piker is convinced that the Democratic Party wouldn’t lose its strong base of Jewish supporters even if it became a full-bore anti-Israel party. Liberal Jews, he thinks, would simply decide their other concerns outweigh Israel.
“American Jews are American. If they were Israeli, they would live in Israel,” Piker said. “At the end of the day, American Jews have American problems, right? And I don’t think Israel is as high of a priority.
“Perhaps I’m wrong,” he mused. “For many American Jews, they might even say, ‘Hasan, how dare you say this. You don’t know this. That’s not the case. It is very important for me.’ And then they’ll go and vote for American-related issues.” He pointed to the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he had hosted on his stream, as a case in point: an estimated one-third of the city’s Jews voted for him, according to exit polls.
Fundamentally, Piker believes antisemitism is a distraction for the left. “If you see what Israel is doing to be a problem, as I do, and you want to solve this problem, you have to dial in on the actual root of this problem,” he said. “And I find that antisemitism, oftentimes, is moving people to focus on Jewish people rather than the actual issue itself.”
Isn’t he being disingenuous? After all, he talks about movement-building and claiming to fight antisemitism while also saying things he knows most Jews will consider antisemitic.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, though he later added that he does “fully understand” why many Jews consider him antisemitic. “That’s why I’m having this conversation.”
He signed off soon after, popping up a few minutes later on his Twitch stream for the start of another session. His fans were tuned in already, waiting for him.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hasan Piker favors Hamas, is pushing Dems to be anti-Israel — and wants Jews not to worry about him appeared first on The Forward.
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Russians Retreat as Al Qaeda-Linked Jihadists, Tuareg Separatists Kill Mali’s Defense Minister, Capture Key Town
A Malian soldier stands in position with his weapon during an attack on Mali’s main military base Kati outside the capital Bamako, Mali, April 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The military junta in Mali came under attack this past weekend in multiple locations across the expansive desert nation, resulting in the death of Defense Minister Sadio Camara and the seizure of Kidal, a key town in the African country’s eastern region.
The strikes resulted from an alliance between Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM,) an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group fighting to establish a state governed by strict Islamic Shariah law, and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg rebel separatist militia which seeks to form an independent nation in Mali’s northeast.
Local sources told France 24 that the groups had seized control of Kidal, a reported FLA stronghold, on Monday. This victory followed the retreat of Russia’s Africa Corps, the mercenary organization the Malian government had contracted at a monthly rate of $10 million to provide security.
Fox News Digital reported reviewing video of Russian mercenary casualties and Russian vehicles fleeing Kidal. An FLA spokesperson told the Associated Press that Russia’s Africa Corps had withdrawn and that a “white” agreement had been made.
Other locations hit by attacks included Kati, Gao, Sévaré, and Mopti.
JNIM took credit for bombings at Mali’s primary airport in Bamako.’
Meanwhile, JNIM is the suspect of a car bomb planted outside Camara’s home which exploded on Saturday, killing Mali’s top military leader and three other family members.
The attacks tell “every Malian, every regional capital, and every foreign partner that JNIM can operate at will inside the supposedly secure heart of the state,” Justyna Gudzowska, executive director of The Sentry, an investigative and policy group, told Reuters.
Mali’s military junta, which has ruled since August 2020, on Monday announced injuries sustained by two of its other leaders, Gen. Oumar Diarra, who serves as chief of the armed forces’ general staff, and Gen. Modibo Koné, director of the National Security Agency.
Yvan Guichaoua, a Sahel specialist at the German research center BICC, told Reuters that the attacks intended to “decapitate” the government.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said that the United States “strongly condemns” the terrorist attack in Mali.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and all those affected,” the spokesperson added to Fox News Digital. “We stand with the Malian people and government in the face of this violence. The United States remains committed to supporting efforts to advance peace, stability, and security across Mali and the region.”
A statement from the office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is “deeply concerned by reports of attacks in several locations across Mali. He strongly condemns these acts of violence, expresses solidarity with the Malian people, and stresses the need to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Germany, told Germany’s DW that the strikes were the biggest he had seen in the country in years.
“Remarkably, there has been a coordination between jihadists and Tuareg rebels, which have nothing in common, but they have a joint enemy,” Laessing said. “They staged together an attack in 2012 and took over northern Mali. Then later they fell out. The jihadists got rid of the Tuaregs. So, it’s remarkable that they made a comeback.”
According to a statement from Russia’s foreign ministry posted to Telegram, 250 militants struck the Bamako Senou International Airport and the military base nearby.
“The Malian Armed Forces repelled the attack and are currently taking further steps to eliminate the militia that may have been, reportedly, trained by Western security agencies,” the foreign ministry said. “Russia is deeply concerned about these developments. This terrorist activity poses a direct threat to the stability of friendly Mali and could have the most serious consequences for the entire region.”
Laessing also spoke to the Associated Press, calling the attack a major blow to Russia.
“The [Russian] mercenaries had no intelligence about the attacks and were unable to protect major cities,” he said. “They have unnecessarily worsened the conflict by not distinguishing between civilians and combatants.”
“The fact that the Malian military intelligence has not been able to detect that these attacks were about to take place is a major failure for them,” Nina Wilen, director for the Africa Program at Egmont Institute for International Relations, told DW, saying the attacks revealed how “strong JNIM has become over the past year.”
She noted that Camara had been a key figure in establishing relations with Russia, making him a symbolic figure to target and send a message opposing the presence of Russian troops.
Islamist activity in the Sahel of Western Africa has risen in recent years, causing analysts to label the region the most lethal place on the planet for terrorist deaths, with JNIM leading the body count.
The trend has caught the attention of Washington, DC.
“Across the Sahel in West Africa and in East Africa, terrorist groups are expanding, embedding, and operating with increasing capability,” US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said during a hearing last week on terrorism in Africa. “ISIS affiliates and al-Qaeda-linked groups are growing, controlling territory, and exploiting weak governance.”
“In region after region, terrorist groups are outpacing the ability of local governments to respond,” Cruz added. “The failures threaten our interest globally and endanger the American homeland. The threat is rapidly growing and demands attention.”
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US soldier charged for threatening to ‘kill every single Jew’ inside of a synagogue
(JTA) — A soldier stationed at Fort Polk in Louisiana was arrested last week after he told users on the popular messaging platform Discord that he planned to conduct a mass shooting at a synagogue.
Jakob Marcoulier, 22, was arrested last Thursday and charged with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce after the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center received a tip in February that he had made threats toward synagogues, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the western district of Louisiana.
According to court documents, the FBI obtained audio from Discord in which Marcoulier allegedly said, “After this deployment if the Jews still have reign over our government, I am going to walk into a synagogue with my AK, with a 75-round drum mag, and all of my extra mags, with my level four plates, and my haka helmet that’s three plus, and I am going to kill every single Jew I know inside of that synagogue. And that’s my goal in life.”
During the communications, Marcoulier told the other users, “You guys will never do anything about but I will. I just have to finish this, I have to go back overseas and do what I have to do. And then you’ll see me in the news. I promise you.”
He also allegedly said that he would “kill these motherf—kers in order to make sure the white youth is f—king secured.”
It was not immediately clear when Marcoulier made the comments, but the United States and Israel jointly attacked Iran on Feb. 28 following a buildup of U.S. troops in the Middle East.
The Iran war has put Jewish institutions across the country and the around the world on high alert, with attacks on synagogues including arsons in Europe and a synagogue ramming in suburban Detroit last month.
“Threats against synagogues and Jewish Americans are threats to the religious freedom promised to every single one of us, and this Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to protecting those freedoms,” United States Attorney Zachary A. Keller said in a statement.
The post US soldier charged for threatening to ‘kill every single Jew’ inside of a synagogue appeared first on The Forward.