The 30-day bans were handed out seemingly simultaneously and came after days of social media dialogue accusing several Arab and pro-Palestinian Twitch streamers of being antisemitic. A clip of Fr0gan saying that she “hoped” American soldiers got PTSD during a livestream was shared across X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit and commented on by YouTuber Ethan Klein and Steven Kenneth Bonnell II, aka Destiny.
However, it appears Fr0gan was not banned for what she said on her more recent stream but instead for the Rating Streamers panel from September 21. During the panel in question, the streamers utilized a popular internet meme called a tier list, in which the top of the tier is the “best” or, in this case, the person for whom using “habibi” is most acceptable and the bottom was the least acceptable. At the TwitchCon panel, the tiers were labeled “Arab Coded, Asks Permission, Thinks It’s a Slur, and Loves Sabra,” a reference to Sabra Hummus, a popular brand of hummus manufactured in the United States. The VOD for the entire second day of TwitchCon (which was when Rating Streamers aired) has been removed from the GivePlz Twitch channel, which hosts all of the TwitchCon videos. The video is still available on the Ayyrabs YouTube page.
On October 19, Klein posted a video to YouTube titled “Twitch Has a Major Problem” in which he said that panel was “kinda Arab good, Jew bad,” because Sabra is a “very popular Hummus brand” in Israel that is “the subject of [a] pro-Palestine boycott.” He also shared a clip from the panel in which Denims jokingly says that Klein deserved his own category for “Zionist.” Then, on a live-stream on YouTube today, October 20, Klein discussed Fr0gan, the “Tier List,” Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, and Hasan “Hasanabi” Piker, another noted political streamer who used to host a show with Klein before the two had a falling out. The livestream was titled “Dan Clancy Must Resign As Twitch CEO.”
The ban wave (which also appeared to include a permanent ban of popular streamer Sneako, who Klein mentioned in his October 19 YouTube video as an example of someone who should not have been allowed to return to Twitch) occurred while Klein was streaming. “30 day ban for saying people like bottom of the barrel hummus but other people get 2 WEEKS for advocating for the genocide of palestinians. got it,” Fr0gan posted on X after the bans were announced, referring to Twitch banning streamer Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt for 14 days after he said that Muslim people come from “an inferior culture” and that he’s “not going to cry a fucking river when people who have genocide that’s baked into their laws are getting genocided” on a recent stream.