Last week, on the Brookline PAX listserv, a community forum that includes many Jewish residents, someone shared the results of an Associated Press–NORC poll. According to the survey, roughly one-third of Americans now believe that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

The statistic itself was disturbing. What troubled me even more was how unremarkable it seemed. An accusation that, until recently, would have been considered extraordinary is now repeated so routinely that many people accept it as settled fact.

Part of the reason, I suspect, is that there has been remarkably little cost to making the accusation. Politicians, activists, and commentators have invoked the word “genocide” with increasing confidence while facing few consequences if the evidence does not support their claims. Senator Bernie Sanders has repeatedly used the term, as have Representative Rashida Tlaib and other elected officials and activists. The effect is cumulative. When influential voices repeatedly invoke one of the gravest accusations in human history, many people naturally conclude that the matter has already been settled.

The accusation itself has immediate consequences. Investigations, legal proceedings, and historical judgments take years. Public opinion forms in weeks. By the time historians reach their conclusions, the moral verdict has often already been rendered in the public mind. In accusing a nation of genocide, public figures should explain what evidence supports that charge, what evidence undermines it, and how they would know if they are mistaken. 

Whether or not history ultimately vindicates those making this accusation, the accusation itself has already reshaped public opinion. That alone should make us cautious. The Holocaust forever invested the word genocide with unique moral force, while Jewish history reminds us how readily extraordinary accusations against Jews have been accepted as truth, often with devastating consequences. Those two histories together should encourage exceptional care before applying such a grave label to the Jewish state.

The word genocide evokes the Holocaust and also Rwanda—cases in which the deliberate destruction of a people was itself the objective. Since the Holocaust is unique in so many........

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