Israel's growing legion of critics never tire of warning the Jewish state not to make the same mistakes in answering Hamas's savage attack that the United States made after 9/11—namely, the Bush administration's post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Those invasions, critics say, led the U.S. into a morass of "forever wars." So, too, will Israel's military effort in Gaza, they assert. As Israel contemplates whether to resume its mission of eradicating Hamas's leadership in Gaza after hostage diplomacy ends, the Biden administration's warnings not to make a similar mistake have grown more intense.

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As Israel continues its assault on Hamas targets, diplomats in Cairo and Qatar are trying to persuade Hamas to free the 240 hostages held in Gaza. While the Israeli media have focused understandably on the civilians and soldiers Hamas seized, the terror group also holds another group hostage: the Strip's 2.2 million Palestinians.

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At America's elite universities, Jewish students huddle in locked rooms as their fellow students demand the liberation of Palestine "from the river to the sea." In an online forum at Cornell, threats are posted to shoot up the Center for Jewish Living and kosher dining hall. On campuses across the country, posters of kidnapped Israeli hostages, many of them children, are torn from walls and shredded. Headstones in Jewish cemeteries are defaced. The iconic Second Avenue Deli on Manhattan's Upper East Side is graffitied.

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Hamas seems to have made two fundamental miscalculations in staging its barbaric October 7 attack on Israel.

First, its leadership clearly assumed that the United States would not continue to support Israel if it killed enough of the Palestinians whom Hamas has been using as human shields to protect its command centers and underground tunnel networks in Gaza.

Second, Hamas apparently assumed that if enough Palestinians in Gaza died in Israeli bombing, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and its patron Iran would escalate the conflict by opening a second front in the war, a scenario that has clearly worried both Israel and Washington.

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Egypt reportedly played a critical role in securing the release on Monday of two more hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. Egypt's assistance was acknowledged by Gal Hirsch, Israel's special envoy for missing and kidnapped Israelis. In a statement, he thanked the Egyptian government for its mediation efforts in helping free Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, and Nurit Cooper, 79, two Israelis whose husbands remain among the 220 other hostages still held by Hamas.

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