The View’s Sunny Hostin recently made news for a claim that facts do not support—i.e., she asserted that, as a jury member in a 1991 high profile trial, she was the lone holdout to block a guilty verdict. It is not the first time Hostin has disregarded facts in making an untrue claim. However, this should come as good news for French President Emmanuel Macron, as will be shared later.
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This month, Macron addressed the United Nations (UN) and made a statement about the terrorist group Hamas that is so outrageous even its members undoubtedly are hard-pressed not to laugh out loud. He actually claimed “Hamas has never operated in the West Bank.”
Palestine is made up of two territories. One is Gaza (or Gaza Strip) which lies along the Mediterranean Sea to Israel’s western border; the other is the West Bank, which is the larger of the two territories, bordering Jordan on Israel’s eastern border.
Hamas in 1987 in Gaza. In a 2006 election, it shockingly won a massive victory, and then used violence to wrestle control away from its competition—the Fatah movement. True to its one-party-rule mindset, in the two decades since then, Hamas has held no new elections. While governing Gaza, the group is also known to operate in other locations, including Lebanon, Qatar, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the West Bank is governed by both the Palestinian Authority (PA), of which Fatah is the largest faction, established in 1994, and Israel. The PA controls about 39% of the territory and Israel the rest.
Israel captured the West Bank—which it refers to by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria—in the 1967 Mideast war. It immediately began populating this area with Jewish settlements. Today, an estimated half-million Jews live there. Just like Hamas in Gaza, fearful of the latter’s influence, the PA has also not held elections in the West Bank.
Separating Gaza and the West Bank, at its closest point, is 21 miles of Israeli territory. If Macron believes this 21 miles of separation serves as a protective barrier for the West Bank from Hamas, he is no smarter than Hostin. Hamas terrorist activity in the territory goes back to at least 2001, when operatives from the West Bank caused the bombing of a pizzeria in Jerusalem. It killed 15 people with a sixteenth dying in 2023 after never coming out of a 22-year coma. There have been numerous terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank since then, for which Hamas has even acknowledged responsibility.
In 2021, the Israeli secret service (Shin Bet) located a Hamas network operating across Ramallah, Jenin, and Hebron. Over 50 operatives were arrested who had been stockpiling weapons and bomb-making materials. This network was funded by the senior Hamas leadership that included the former head of their West Bank operations. Northern West Bank “battalions” are known to cooperate with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which routinely engages the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) using both explosive devices and automatic weapons.
More recent Hamas terrorist attacks include a massacre in June 2023 in which four Israeli citizens were killed at a hummus restaurant near the settlement of Eli. Hamas even boasted the two shooters involved were official members of its military wing in the West Bank. Additionally, responsibility was claimed for a shooting the very next month, killing an IDF soldier near the settlement of Kedumim.
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In August 2024, the military wing of Hamas issued a formal statement of responsibility for a drive-by shooting that killed Israeli civilian Yonatan Deutsch, 23. Perhaps not realizing that sometimes taking responsibility comes with consequences, the Hamas cell involved operating out of Jenin was identified and eliminated by the Shin Bet.
Hamas also took responsibility that same month for a coordinated detonation of two car bombs in the West Bank, resulting in the wounding of three Israelis in the West Bank.
The list of Hamas violent activity in the West Bank goes on. It is incredulous that Macron would make the claim he did.
Hamas has been operating in the West Bank for decades and more recently has been escalating its violence there. It is said that, “Every time Israeli forces enter, they encounter explosive devices and live fire.” While support exists for Hamas among West Bank Palestinian Arabs, cooperation by them with Hamas has been limited—nowhere near the level of cooperation in Gaza where terrorists force Palestinians to participate. The pro-Hamas/anti-Israel Palestinian influence was reflected by a poll showing a vast majority of Palestinians supported the October 7, 2023 surprise Hamas raid into Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent Israeli victims.
Interestingly, it is Hamas’s activity in the West Bank that has motivated the PA to voluntarily work with Israel on security related matters lest it be targeted as well.
Macron’s statement before the UN also ignores a clear declaration in the Hamas charter mandating the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamic state where it now exists. Giving itself such a mandate is a clear indication that any asset to which it can gain access will be used to do so.
Why should Hostin’s ignorance of the facts of a trial in which she was a jury member be good news for Macron? The View has a reputation for its hosts lacking factual comprehension. Now serving his second five-year term and unable to run for a third, Macron will step down from office on May 14, 2027. He will only be 49 and, undoubtedly, looking for post-presidential employment. Joining The View as a panelist would be an ideal opportunity for him. After all, he has already demonstrated by his UN comments concerning Hamas that he is more than qualified to serve as a panelist.
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