To be sure, the argument that Hezbollah is as bad as ISIS is debatable. One can acknowledge that Hezbollah is hideous and evil, but one can’t quite imagine ISIS handing out press passes to critics to cover their rallies, much less aligning with Christian groups.

And while it is also true that Assad has killed lots of Christians, so did the United States in World War II. So did Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War. But there is a difference between killing Christians who are your enemy in war and killing Christians because they are Christians. Before we call these groups equivalent as it relates to Christian persecution, we should point to Assad saying something like, “Well, we’ve got to wipe out this specific group of infidels on the grounds that they are infidels.” A lot of what we’re talking about with regard to the persecution of Christians hinges on motivation and not just being tyrants over everyone.

Having said all that, we should not lose sight of who bad guys are. A lot of Arab Christians do exactly that, and move from making alliances with the Assad regime because it’s protecting them right now to deciding that same regime is good. That’s undoubtedly an important point to counter.

You may not like how these people made these arguments, or some of the dismissive ways that they treated the issue of Christian persecution, but hopefully you can see that these are, in fact, good points. It’s their focus.