In response to President Trump’s threat to deploy the United States military to Nigeria to stop the murderous persecution of Christians that has been transpiring for at least a decade, Nigerian officials have emphatically denied that there is anything like a Christian genocide occurring in their land.

Sadly, the historical record is replete with more than a handful of genocides. “Genocide” is indeed a meaningful term. Yet precisely because it’s also one from which political partisans have gotten their fair share of mileage, claims of genocide must be attended to with care.

For example, Israel’s most vocal and vigorous critics have been insisting for the better part of two years that Israel is committing a “genocide” against the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s defenders, while not denying (the undeniable fact) that Israel has indeed killed tens of thousands of Gazans, staunchly reject the characterization of this killing as “genocidal.”

In the final analysis, though, whether a mass killing of a demographic is “genocidal” or not, if it’s murderous—i.e., unjustified—it’s, to put it mildly,........

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