It’s not clear what the Movement for Black Lives will do about the backlash against this part of its platform, if anything. An informal spokesperson for the drafting committee, Zakiya Scott, declined interviews, saying, “Folks have been getting a lot of criticism for the divest / invest piece of the platform. Before we say anything as a group, it has to be agreed upon by the members of the leadership team and the endorsing organizations.”

On every side, the clash over language and history in the Movement for Black Lives platform is a story of loss. Relationships have been damaged, and political momentum lost. And the hope of liberation, cherished by black and Jewish Americans alike, has been cut with resentment.

* * *

The word “genocide” was coined to describe the Holocaust. Six million Jews were systematically eliminated from the earth on the basis of blood and faith. Subsequently, a nation was formed where those who survived could go—including those fleeing the homes they tried to return to, only to be met with rejection and renewed violence. The dream of the state of Israel—of freedom, radical equality, and survival—antedated the Holocaust, but in its wake, it assumed new urgency.

Yet, that was not the genocide the Movement for Black Lives elected to highlight. “The U.S. justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” the activists wrote in the platform. They go on to call Israel an “apartheid state,” condemning Israeli settlements and the “apartheid wall”—presumably the security barrier that roughly follows the country’s border with the West Bank.

These two words—“genocide” and “apartheid”—have been the focus of the outcry in Jewish communities. “We were stunned and outraged by the erroneous and egregious claims of genocide and apartheid,” the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement said. T’ruah, a progressive organization that describes itself as “the rabbinic call for justice,” said it was “extremely dismayed” by the use of “genocide.” The Union for Reform Judaism went a step further: “We reject wholeheartedly the notion that effective anti-racism work can only be done by denouncing and excoriating Israel,” it said.

There are as many positions on Israel within the Jewish community as there are Jews, and including many who adamantly oppose the country’s treatment of Palestinians or its erection of the security barrier. But the broadness of the outcry—reaching across progressive and left-leaning groups, with few exceptions—suggests it’s about more than policy.

The most basic explanation is that it’s a disagreement over language. From the perspective of the platform’s drafters, the word “genocide” is simply descriptive. “We recognize that the use of the word ‘genocide’ is controversial, whether used in reference to the systemic killing of black people here in the U.S. or the killing of Palestinians,” said Janae Bonsu, the national public-policy chair for a Chicago-based group called Black Youth Project 100, who was involved in drafting the platform. “But we do believe that it is accurate from a legal perspective and a moral perspective.”