Op-Ed: No Moral Equivalent

By James Wilson • July 2, 2025

The following Op-Ed was submitted by James Wilson. Op-Eds to not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.

(Author Note: President Trump has announced a full-on ceasefire between Israel and Iran as a result of the bombing campaigns against their nuclear facilities. Let us pray this ceasefire holds. Yet the ceasefire changes nothing written below.)

It is remarkable that I posted an article titled, “Adonai and the Jews” the very day – but prior to its announcement – that American B2 bombers obliterated three of Iran’s underground nuclear weapon facilities. I had no prior knowledge – prophetic or otherwise, beyond an unusual sense of urgency to publish by Saturday, June 21 – of these events; I simply find it amazing that I am privileged to publish a piece making the case for our coming attack just a few hours before it is actually made. The case to be made was simple enough: Not since Haman – prime minister to Xerxes, the King of Persia, and known to us from the Biblical Book of Esther – tried to destroy all Jews in a Before-Christ holocaust has there been such a cut-and-dried case of innocent versus guilty, as in the current conflict between Israel and Iran. The Jews had offended in no way but that they lived at all in Haman’s day, and it is no different today, as modern Persia seeks their extermination.

The fact that Jews the world over continue to live is overwhelming prima facie evidence their survival – even their prosperity – is the fruit of intelligent and purposeful design. Empires have sought their destruction since Egypt gave way to Assyria, later Babylonia, and the aforementioned Persia under Haman, followed by the Romans. (I omit empires who were content to conquer, such as Macedonia and the Ottomans.) Rome was followed by the Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition, the Third Reich, and their spiritual successors, militant Islam. Iran – modern day Persia – is only the latest in a long line. That line itself is the history of the Jews recorded in the Bible, and the Bible has not missed a step along the way.

I still receive comments from people determined to prove the Jews of Israel are the aggressors – on the one hand – and not really the Jews of Israel after all – on the other – as though there were any historical truth to the former or any relevance to the latter. I received one comment from a man who refers to Israel as FauxIsrael, and calls her government the oppressor from whom the real Jews need to be set free in his argument (with me) that he is not anti-Semitic. Such views are so at odds with readily available evidence that I can only scratch my head. And to call Israel the aggressor has about as much credibility as the contention Americans have not really visited the moon. (Some commentators do assert Israel fired the first shot in 1967, but to believe such tripe one must ignore the fact Israeli farmers were being shelled for some time before June and the armies of five nations were massed on their borders awaiting orders to attack.) Of course, that degree of credibility is sufficient for the so-called United Nations, and for a share of American university students. But I digress.

There is – and can be – no moral equivalent between a terrorist culture that specializes in the kidnap, torture, and murder of women and children and a nation that occasionally creates collateral damage in its efforts to defend itself. Neither is there moral parity between butchers who use humanitarian aid funds to build terror tunnels and a nation that warns civilians to flee before attacking, and actually provides water and electricity to her enemies when not engaged in real time combat.

As I write, Israel continues her air assault on Iranian military targets, justifiably proud of the low numbers of Iranian civilians caught in the crush of war. Meanwhile Iran continues to target Israeli civilians almost exclusively. (Iran has fired missiles at US bases in Qatar and Iraq – as she promised – and American gunners have shot them down – as promised.) Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu continue to offer negotiations even at this very late date – because both men hate and despise unnecessary killing, and both believe that killing should never be necessary. Iran continues to hope one of its assassination squads – sent into America during or following the election that returned the Donald to office – will find a crack in the president’s security screen, while the American president resists calls to assassinate Iran’s chief mullah.

Israeli and American leaders understand that all war is a terrible waste of innocent – and even guilty – human life. Americans have learned the folly of seeking regime change even in a moral cesspool like Iran at this time in history. (It actually worked well in post-World War II Germany, Italy, and Japan, but failed miserably in Vietnam and Iraq.) We can hope for the best from a rising younger generation in Iran, but they will have to own the consequences of their efforts without our interference. Like us, they must work out their own salvation in fear and trembling, per Philippians 2:12. Our job is limited to neutralizing the Iranian threat to others, and ourselves, a task the mullahs have forced on us.

Let me be perfectly clear one last time – before and after America’s Air Force, combined with the armed might and determination of Israel’s armed forces, completes the dismantling of a nuclear weapons program threatening our very existence as much as it threatens Israel – there is no moral equivalent between the brutality of the Iranian Reich and the peace-through-strength approach of the Israeli and American Republics. Let me say it again – for the benefit of all the from-the-river-to-the-sea fanatics decorating our university campuses – there is absolutely and categorically no moral equivalency between a sovereign nation defending its right to exist and a fascist theocratic dictatorship determined to wipe that nation from the face of the earth by any means available to it.

Staying in our lane can usher in a new day for all concerned. But there will never be a moral equivalent.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation – available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at praynorthstate@gmail.com