While hundreds of students gathered at the University of Texas at Austin on Wednesday night to hear far-left streamer Hasan Piker speak about the future of progressive politics, former Israeli hostage Maya Regev was across campus recounting her 50 days in Hamas captivity at a counter-event organized in response to Piker’s controversial appearance. 

“From partying at a music festival to being abducted and held captive in horrific conditions for weeks, Maya’s strength and resilience in the face of brutality is profoundly moving,” Ethan Shatz, a UT PhD student who attended the event, told Jewish Insider. 

In a discussion moderated by UT student Jeremy Lamm, Regev recounted how she, along with her brother, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive by Hamas for nearly two months. 

The event featuring Regev — attended by some 250 students — was organized and funded by the Israel on Campus Coalition, which said it planned the evening as a counter program to Piker’s talk. It was held at the school’s Chabad house and cosponsored by Students Supporting Israel, Longhorns for Israel, Young Republicans and StandWithUs. 

Across campus, more than 400 students packed into the William C. Powers Jr. Student Activity Center to hear from Piker, who has an extensive history of antisemitic and anti-American rhetoric, including justifying Oct. 7, calling Orthodox Jews “inbred” and asserting in 2019 that America deserved 9/11 — a remark he later said he should have phrased better while standing by the underlying critique. On Wednesday, Piker, who boasts 3.1 million followers on Twitch, spoke about free speech and the future of progressive politics in Texas, according to The Daily Texan.

The sold-out Piker event, hosted by the University Democrats, a decades-old student Democratic Party political organization, sparked outrage from Jewish leaders and students on campus, who said the Austin campus had previously been one of the most welcoming in the country for Jewish students since Oct. 7.

During a livestream later Wednesday night, Piker mocked the organizers of the counter-event, referring to the group by its acronym, ICC — which is also the acronym for the International Criminal Court, which has issued warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant — and joking, “There’s no way they call themselves ICC… really ICC, Israel?”