Two years ago today, Hamas carried out one of the most heinous and deadly acts of terror in history. Since then, the world has changed, but not in favor of Israel, the victim of the strike that left more than 1,200 people dead. After receiving an outpouring of support in the immediate aftermath of the attack, Tel Aviv has squandered this international goodwill with a brutal response that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.

Let us be clear that none of this is meant to diminish the brutality of what Hamas did on October 7, 2023, or the suffering of the victims and their families. However, it is undeniably true that Israel is increasingly isolated and worse off now.

Last month, Canada, Great Britain, and France joined more than 140 other nations and became the first G7 countries to recognize a Palestinian state.

The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Its largest trading partner, the European Union, is proposing sanctions on Israel as a whole and on two individual cabinet members and extremist Jewish settlers in particular.

And public opinion, especially among young people, is turning against Tel Aviv in the United States, its most important ally.

Some of this may sound familiar.

On September 11, 2001, the US was the target of the worst terrorist attack ever.

It responded by leading a coalition of allies to invade Afghanistan in a campaign that resulted in (temporary) regime change but cost more American lives than were lost during the actual attack and added trillions of dollars to the federal debt.

Less than two years later, the US launched an ill-fated war with Iraq under false pretenses, which cost more lives and treasure.

In addition, George W. Bush used the “War on Terror” to curb the civil liberties of Americans and to justify crimes like the torture of detainees and the extraordinary rendition of suspects. The Iraq boondoggle, in particular, lost the US a lot of the international support it enjoyed after the 9/11 attacks.

All of this begs the question of whether it benefits the good guys, i.e., the victims of brutal attacks, to react to them by showing their worst sides.

We think not.

It stands to reason that the US is not safer now than it was on September 10th nor on September 12th of 2001. The world is still full of determined enemies who will give their lives to harm the United States, and many of them were created because of the War on Terror.

This is likely also true now in the case of Israel.

The mass killing of Palestinian civilians does nothing to make Israel safer. Instead, it breeds more hatred among its most committed enemies while also eroding Tel Aviv’s support abroad.

In the short run, Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip may benefit the Netanyahu government. In the long term, it seems like a foolish strategy.

To be fair, we don’t know what the answer is or how a country is supposed to react to a large-scale attack.

But a response that results in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians certainly seems to be the wrong approach.

Even though al-Qaeda is no longer a threat, and even though Hamas may end up being less of a player going forward if a peace deal is reached, one can’t help but think that, in both cases, the terrorists achieved their objective of weakening their targets.

As for the October 7 attack, two years later, the only real winners seem to be the defense industry and US Republicans, who have used pro-Palestinian support on college campuses to impose their ideology on American universities under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism.