YouTube star Hasan in tears over Israel-Palestine footage: 'It's really f***** up'

Podcaster Hasan Piker has left many viewers touched after sharing his despair at a two-year-old clip of Israeli forces attacking a crowd of mourners during the funeral of a Palestinian-American journalist.

Piker, co-host of The Leftovers podcast, said through tears that the incident was “really f***** up”, and asked whether Palestinians can have “a moment of peace”.

He was speaking during an episode covering the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. In the discussion, Piker played a clip of the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who was shot dead while covering a raid in the West Bank in 2021.

In 2022, Abu Akleh’s body was being taken in a casket from the town of Jenin to her funeral in the Old City of East Jerusalem, in a procession.

Footage showed armoured Israeli officers attack the people carrying the casket with batons before beating and kicking others. Many of the mourners were holding Palestinian flags.

Piker co-hosts The Leftovers with the American-Israeli comedian Ethan Klein. It has more than 2.9m subscribers on YouTube.

In their latest show, Piker broke down in tears at the clip.

He said: “They went to her funeral and beat the s*** out of people and ripped the Palestinian flag off her.

“Can’t Palestinians have a moment of peace in this f****** world? They can’t even mourn the dead.

“How is that allowed? How can that continue? How do you not see that?”

Shireen Abu Akleh’s coffin dropped after Israeli police charge mourners at journalist’s funeralyoutu.be

Referring to recent events in Israel and Palestine, he later added: “It is so horrifying that this can happen in the supposed only democracy in the Middle East.

“This is violence, but it is legalised and state-backed. So we are not trained to see it as a violent act.

The podcast episode, which aired on Thursday, was devoted to the war between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas militants invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip on 7 October, killing 1,300 people and abducting more than 200, including civilians.

The subsequent Israeli counteroffensive has seen rockets rain down on Gaza, killing more than 1,500 people.

Israel has also cut off electricity, water and food supplies to the city where two million people live. Nearly half of Gaza's residents are children.

On 13 October, the 1.1m Palestinians in the northern part of Gaza were ordered to evacuate within 24 hours before an Israeli ground invasion.

The World Health Organisation has called the evacuation order a "death sentence" for the thousands of Palestinian people receiving critical treatment in Gaza's hospitals, which are already overflowing following days of Israeli bombardment.

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