British authorities said Monday they blocked Hasan Piker, a Turkish American online streamer, and another political commentator from entering the U.K. to speak at public events.
Piker, a liberal political commentator who is frequently critical of U.S. President Donald Trump, Israel and the war in Gaza, has 2.8 million followers on Twitch.
The Home Office said that the electronic travel authorization, or ETA, for Piker and Cenk Uygur, who hosts the “Young Turks” online political talk show and is reportedly Piker’s uncle, were canceled “on the grounds that their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.”
“Decisions to refuse or cancel an ETA on these grounds are based solely on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to U.K. society,” the Home Office said.
Piker and Uygur were due to speak at SXSW London, a culture, technology and creativity festival, this month. Uygur was also expected to give a speech at the Oxford Union, the prestigious student debating society.
“A sad state of affairs where obviously the interests of Israel take the highest priority,” Piker said on his YouTube channel.
Uygur said on X that he had been banned “for criticizing Israel. Are we free any more?”
Piker has faced criticism over some of his comments on the Hamas militant group, which is considered a terrorist organization in the U.K. and the U.S., among other countries.
When they win the war, set up international recognized borders and a government they can decide who comes in.
Ah yes, the 12 years old logic is surely going to work to convince us.
What an absolutely disgusting statement. Such drivel doesn’t even warrant the responses debunking it.
Yet you did
They did. Hundreds of years ago. Then colonizers and bullies came along and took it all away. People should be able to govern themselves. End of story. Anything else is justifying colonialism and authoritarianism.
It’s bullshit that countries should be able to deny entry to people arbitrarily, but your history is also a bit off. There never was a Palestinian nation state; there weren’t even nation states as we know them today hundreds of years ago (when Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, and before that the Mamluk Sultanate).
You are the only one mentionning an independent state. Borders do not have to apply to only independent state either. The term can apply to non-administrative regions, geographic zones, and cultural areas The area that the british took from the ottoman empire was already called Palestine and the original plan was a single entity.
Correct. Anything else is basically saying culture X doesn’t have the exact same constructs or concepts as we do therefore they don’t exist. Tribal lands aren’t technically a nation or a state. Even if they are functionally the same. Pretty handy for the US and Canada. Just came in and took my families home and lands. Slaughtering them. No harm no foul. Should have known to have a nation/state right? State based colonialism is a hell of a drug.
Independent state or not, there certainly was no instance of a “Palestinian” people “govern[ing] themselves” (whatever that may mean - the majority of the world, including Israel/Palestine, has never had anything resembling a democratic government).
The Ottomans themselves were by definition a small dynastic elite that ruled over a multi-ethnic, multilingual empire. They didn’t give a shit about what “Palestinians” thought about the governance of this area except insofar as it suited their own perceived interests.
The Ottomans didn’t officially call this region “Palestine” in its own administrative divisions though that name existed as an unofficial designation for the rough area.
The Sykes-Picot borders were drawn from the rectums of some drunk European aristocrats who barely knew the region. On which sides of those borders people ended up is largely a historical accident.
The borders are already internationally recognized. It is gaza, the west bank and east jerusalem. While they would effictively control the boder if they win against the colonizer. Palestinian right to control their own lands and who enter it exists before it become an independent state.