Last Sunday, Islamic State (IS) attacked two Coptic churches in Egypt, killing at least 44 worshipers gathered for holiday prayers. The attacks followed December’s deadly suicide bombing of another church. To Mokhtar Awad, the Egyptian branch of IS is attempting to move its insurgency from the Northern Sinai—where it has killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers, and earlier this week launched a rocket at Israel—into Egypt proper.

For months, Islamic State has been accelerating the import of Iraq-style sectarian tactics into Egypt. In doing so, the group hopes to destabilize the Middle East’s most populous country and expand the reach of its by now clearly genocidal project for the region’s minorities. . . . It appears that the group is now focusing more time, resources, and most importantly talent on Egypt, making the situation likely to worsen in the future.

Targeting Egypt’s Christians is a cold and calculated strategy for the group. IS hopes that inflaming sectarian strife in Egypt will be the first step in the country’s unraveling. . . . And so, although the Palm Sunday attacks were hardly the first time Egypt’s Christians were targeted by jihadists, Islamists, or even ordinary Muslim mobs, they represent a sea change in the nature of the threat Egypt’s Christians now face, with far-reaching implications for the country as a whole.

IS has taken the radical step of positing that Christians are to Egypt what the Shiites are to Iraq, embracing the position that they can be killed indiscriminately and for no reason other than for what they believe. Since the December 2016 Cairo church bombing, the group’s supporters online have been forcefully pushing this notion, claiming that the Christians of Egypt were first and foremost polytheists and that due to the “treachery” they had showed, by presumably “allying” with the West and the Egyptian government, they had to be killed.

It is unlikely that this strategy will succeed the way IS envisions in Egypt, but the attempt to implement it will leave a trail of destruction that will primarily devastate Egypt’s Christian minority.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.