Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Nicholas Fondacaro, whose main job is to hate-watch "The View," has taken in recent weeks to smearing co-host Sunny Hostin as "anti-Semitic." But as with his smear of Hostin as "racist" -- which is based on her merely talking about racism and his failure to understand how metaphors work -- this latest smear appears to be based mostly on Hostin merely talking about the war between Israel and Hamas. Fondacaro helpfully summarized his attacks in a Nov. 2 post:
Since the start of the current war between Israel and Hamas, NewsBusters has documented the festering antisemitism leaking from The View’s Sunny Hostin as she has blamed Israel for the October 7 terrorist attack against them, decried Israeli anger at Hamas as “terrifying,” pushed Hamas’s propaganda, and suggested it was Israel that was committing acts of “terror” and “war crimes.”
Let's take a closer look at those allegations. For the first allegation, that Hostin "has blamed Israel for the October 7 terrorist attack," liked to his writeup of the Oct. 9 episode, in which she he quoted her saying nothing of the kind. Fondacaro quoted Hostin noting that "this was a highly coordinated and wide-scale attack by Hamas," then asking ABC reporter James Longman, "What do we know about the timing of this, and what was the impetus for this to happen now?" Longman responded by accurately pointing out that the current government in Israel is "the most right-wing government in this country's history" adding that there's "a sense perhaps that many Palestinians that any kind of political way out of this, is behind them because some of the right-wing elements of the government have been very incendiary in their rhetoric about Palestinians." Despite the fact that Hostin said absolutely nothing that blamed Israel, Fondacaro claimed otherwise: "It was predictable that Hostin would take that position since it bought into Hamas’s narrative that Palestinian land was being occupied by colonizers. She likely sympathizes with that stance since she’s chronically aggrieved and supposedly “oppressed” (as she put it), despite being a multimillionaire. She had even demanded 'reparations' from the United States."
For his second example, from the Oct. 10 episode, Fondacaro did actually quote Hostin saying that "“What is terrifying to me also is that there is so much anger on the Israeli side”; Hostin went on to say that "But now you have a defense minister that is saying we are going to close the Strip and put 2.2 million innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip and we're going to launch an offensive against those 2.2 million people, half of which are children; providing no food, water, or electricity. There are losers on both sides of this, and they're civilians." Not even Fondacaro disputed that there is "so much anger on the Israeli side," and it's also factually accurate that there are many civilians in harm's way in Gaza. Nevertheless, Fondacaro huffed that Hostin engaged in 'anti-Israel/anti-Semitic hate and propaganda" and smeared her as a "racist colonizer."
His third example came from the Oct. 11 episode, in which he accused Hostin of "openly pushing Hamas terrorist propaganda about Israel carrying out collective punishment against Palestinians and how they should “look at some restraint here” after 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered." But the first thing Fondacaro quoted her saying was the ract that the residents of Gaza "have not had a democratic election since 2007 … They did not vote in these people currently vote in Hamas" -- not excactly "Hamas terrorist propaganda." Since he couldn't dispute that fact, he then tried to falsely conflate Palestinians elsewhere with the residents of Gaza: "So, Sunny, answer this: If Palestinians didn’t support the actions of Hamas, then why were they out celebrating in the streets and parading around the bodies of their victims? Why were they so emboldened as to have pro-terrorist rallies across the globe, even here in America?"
Fondacaro then wrote that "Hostin followed that up by pushing Hamas propaganda about how Israel was supposedly violating international law and dishing out collective punishment against Palestinians. This caused the rest of the cast to revolt against her, calling out Hamas for using human shields and storing weapons in schools and noting the Israeli Defense Force warned civilians before striking targets." He didn't accuse "the rest of the cast" of pushing Israeli propaganda.
Fondacaro's final alleged piece of evidence came from his Oct. 13 episode writeup, which he began by complaining that Hostin said "Hamas has been designated a terror organization just like many other terror organizations have had this designation, like the Proud Boys here in the United States"; he made no effort to dispute the accuracy of her description. Then he raged:
Hostin followed up by using Hamas talking points suggesting Israeli military actions were “retaliation against innocent civilians collectively” which were acts of “terror” and “war crimes.” Continuing to draw false equivalencies, she grossly compared Israel to Russia despite the fact Israel did not start the war:
And again, those are not my words, those are the words of the law. And the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said, just last year when we were talking about Ukraine, she said Russia's attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity, and heating with winter coming, these are acts of pure terror, and we have to call it as such.
Hostin responded by doubling down on the anti-Israel smears, proclaiming, “They should really refrain from committing war crimes or terror because they're going to lose the goodwill that they have.”
In fact, civilians have died in Gaza at a higher rate than in other recent conflicts, most of the civilians killed in Gaza due to Israeli bombing have been women and children. Further, nearly half of the bombs Israel has dropped in Gaza have been unguided, which causes a greater threat to civilians. No less than Amnesty International is discussing the possibilty that Israel's apparent disregard for the lives of civilians in Gaza constitute a war crime.
Despite the fact that there is nothing anti-Semitic about questioning the tactics Israel is using in Gaza, Fondacaro screeched in the beginning of his post that "We can now add anti-Semite as an accurate descriptor for The View ’s racist co-host, Sunny Hostin." (and, no, Fondacaro still doesn't understand how metaphors work.) In the Nov. 2 post that contained his list, Fondacaro tried to mock Hostin for responding to being falsely smeared as anti-Semitic:
In a segment featuring MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch, Hostin began her comments by whining that she doesn’t like talking about the war because she gets called out for being an anti-Semite. Her defense? She had a Jewish family member:
And I've explained that even as a person of Jewish ancestry – my grandfather is Jewish – Which in my view, is someone who hates Jews. I would have to hate my family.
“However, there is a difference between an anti-Semite and being someone that speaks out against Israel's -- some of Israel's policies,” she argued.
But as noted above, she wasn’t just speaking out against Israeli policy, she was speaking out against them even being angry about the terrorist attack that killed 1,400, including babies, and blaming them for it.
Unsurprisingly, Fondacaro did not explain how that supposedly equates to anti-Semitism. He then noted that "Deutsch even explained it to Hostin in simple terms that it was in Israel was indeed trying to minimize casualties and noted that it was in their best interest to do so" -- but, of course, he wonldn't label Deutsch as repeating Israeli propaganda the way he smeared Hostin for spreading "Hamas propaganda."
