Under pressure from pro-Israel group, Twitch bans several Arab streamers over a month-old TwitchCon panel

In the last week Twitch has found itself embroiled in controversy over what streamers are allowed to say and do about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. The incident that brought it to prominence was a racist anti-Palestinian rant by popular streamer Asmongold, which saw him receive a 14-day suspension as well as admit he was out of order and apologise.

Now Twitch has banned a group of Middle Eastern streamers for "hateful conduct," and for one month each, even longer than Asmongold. The reason for the bans isn't entirely clear, but it apparently centres around a tier list ranking streamers from "Arab" to "loves Sabra", an American and Israeli-owned hummus brand.

The ranking was part of a TwitchCon panel hosted by Twitch partner Frogan on September 21, who said it was all about "who has a habibi pass" (habibi is Arabic for "my love"). This was subsequently picked up by Ethan Klein of h3h3Productions, a streamer and advocate for Israel, who posted a video titled "Twitch Has a Major Problem" claiming the panel was "kinda Arab good, Jew bad" and that the Sabra reference is anti-Israeli because this particular brand is often part of pro-Palestinian boycotts. Klein further produced an inverted image of the tier list on Instagram Stories (which disappear after 24 hours) with "loves Sabra" now accompanied by "Jews who live in Israel" to make his point.

The real game-changer, however, seems to have been the involvement of the Anti-Defamation League, a major American non-profit that campaigns against antisemitism and promotes Zionism as a movement for "self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland." Yesterday the ADL confirmed in a statement it had put pressure on Twitch to act about the month-old stream, and accused Frogan of spreading "antisemitic vitriol." The full statement reads:

"ADL spoke with the Twitch staff today after becoming aware of several concerning incidents on the social media platform and/or involving Twitch streamers in the past week. We appreciate Twitch making the right decision to finally suspend the streamer Frogan for abusing her platform and the Twitchcon event to spread antisemitic vitriol during this time of intense apprehension for the Jewish community."

It goes on to say Twitch must improve with "meaningful action", and ends by saying it will "continue to hold them accountable when they fail in that responsibility."

Frogan and the other panelists were subsequently banned for 30 days for "hateful conduct."

The streamers involved in the panel are not happy about this. "[The claim is we] and our guests did a tier list where 'good=Arab and Jew=bad' which isn’t what happened," said Frogan after the ban. "Our tier list was 'who has habibi pass' which is a meme tier list we did with a variety of creators [...] we are all Arabs from different religious backgrounds: I am Muslim, Capri is Christian, and Raff is Jewish. Sabra hummus is objectively the worst hummus to exist and is the unfortunate standard of hummus in the US."

Leaving the question of Sabra hummus aside, Twitch appears to have waded into a controversy where, whatever you think of Frogan's sense of humor, one prominent critic mocked-up an image to make it look worse than it is, and a major non-profit has steamed in to demand a ban. Frogan later posted the ban notice from Twitch for "targeted hateful conduct", while noting that she's received 30 days while Asmongold's anti-Palestinian rant (which was much more explicit) landed him a 14 day suspension. The TwitchCon stream has now also been deleted from the platform.

Whether the ban is justified or not, it is notable that it's been applied retrospectively to a TwitchCon stream that the platform was clearly aware of, and seems to have come about thanks to pressure from an outside rights organisation. The latter is not unusual, of course, but it does seem like Twitch being forced to belatedly moderate something that the platform initially judged as fine.

By going after content like this, it feels Twitch has just created a massive problem for itself: Because it's almost impossible to say anything about Israel or Palestine without angering someone, somewhere. If Twitch just thinks the topic shouldn't ever be allowed on the platform, that's at least a clear decision. But if it's going to start getting into the weeds over streamer tier lists and hummus, it's going to need a whole lot more moderators.