I struggle to understand what animates the complaints of those who dismiss the necessity of defeating the Iranian regime. The regime is animated by an apocalyptic ideology that will only be satisfied by the total destruction of Israel and the West.
The claim that Iran is not an imminent and existential threat is ludicrous. The regime is (or was) on the cusp of having nuclear weapons – weapons which they fully intend (or intended) to use. And they planned to store those nuclear armed cluster-warheads in hardened bunkers that are (or were) almost impossible to destroy. As people sit around and pontificate about Just War theory and whether or not this event meets that criteria, I can assure you that the view from my apartment will alleviate any of your doubts.
Our enemies wish to commit genocide. They plan to wipe Israel and its ten million citizens off the face of the earth. War is a horrible, terrible, destructive and violent – but we live in a fallen world. And like it or not, human governments are in fact part of God’s providential design and they have a duty to protect their citizenry. Human governments should never be theocracies. But human governments can (in theory) – especially if believers are a part of that government, “try to imitate the principles of God’s rule so far as circumstances and the hardness of human hearts allow.” (Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics, 84). It is an imperfect world we live in but governments have a duty to protect their citizens.
All that to say – I care little for the Pope’s recent critique. After 2000 years of institutionalized horrific Jew-hatred, people like to take comfort in the strides the Catholic church has made since the publication of Nostra Aetate and its renunciation of antisemitism. Well, the devil is in the details, as they say – the Catholic Church affirmed the validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people but it did so only in general. It still completely avoids acknowledging that Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel or that they have a biblical right to this place. The opposite is actually the case – the Vatican has officially recognized the state of Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem.
The claim that Arabs rather than Jews are the only true indigenous occupants of this place is an inversion of reality and history. Until the Pope repudiates the Catholic Church’s embrace of antizionism – a form of Jew-hatred just as evil and obscene as antisemitism, he has no moral authority to lecture us about this conflict.
