No, the argument isn’t “help these people instead of helping those people”, it’s “help who you want to help, but make sure your money is actually spent helping rather than paying people to raise awareness”.

There are loads of charities that are basically scams that give very little to the cause they claim to support and reserve most of the money for the high salaries of their board members. The EA argument, at its core, is to do some research before you give and try to avoid these scams.

But it's not about who deserves your help, it's about where it would make the biggest difference

Don't you have other things to do than to give flak to people who helped a population at the other side of the globe not to die of malaria ?

In the meantime, Christians did not give us vaccines and antibiotics without which you might not even be alive today. Also charity has a bad track record of being more about making the donors feel superior/good about themselves than actually making a change. Maybe you'd like to read "Down and out in London and Paris".

Don't get me wrong, the Salvation Army is great and everyone who wishes to make a difference is welcome to do so.

I, myself, am not even donating to EA causes and what I have done is much closer to Salvation Army stuff (a hot soup and a place to rest) but I don't see how the Salvation Army can be weaponized by against EA, that's insane.