The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is no longer merely curating art. It is attempting to pass judgment on one of the most complex and volatile conflicts in the world—and doing so with a level of certainty it has neither the authority nor the expertise to claim.

This is not cultural stewardship. It is institutional overreach.

The accusation of “genocide” is among the most serious charges in international law. It is not a slogan, not a political talking point, and certainly not something a museum should be casually amplifying. It requires legal determination, evidentiary rigor, and judicial authority. The MFA possesses none of these—and yet it appears willing to lend its institutional voice to precisely such a claim.

That is not neutrality. That is advocacy—reckless, one-sided advocacy.

This concern is not isolated. As Andrea Levin recently argued in the Boston Herald, the MFA has effectively stepped into the role of endorsing a “genocide” narrative—something far outside the mandate of a cultural institution and deeply troubling in its implications.

The reality is far more complex than the narrative the MFA seems eager to embrace. The claim itself remains deeply contested, legally unresolved, and widely debated. Serious scholars, legal experts, and governments are divided on whether the legal threshold for genocide has been met, underscoring that this is not a settled conclusion but an ongoing and contentious debate.

Civilian suffering in Gaza is real and tragic. But tragedy does not automatically equate to genocide. Casualties of war do not equate to genocide. To blur that line is not only intellectually careless—it cheapens the meaning of the word itself.

And let us be clear: Hamas bears direct and primary responsibility for the suffering of civilians in Gaza. Its decision to initiate violence and the way it conducts that violence are not peripheral—they are central to the current reality. Any attempt to construct a moral narrative that ignores or minimizes this fact is not analysis—it is distortion.

And yet, where are the exhibitions, the curated narratives, the institutional statements condemning Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Hizballah? Where is the moral clarity when it comes to the actions that initiated this violence? Instead, what we see is a pattern: when the subject turns to Israel—the Jewish state—the harshest accusations are deployed quickly and confidently. That asymmetry is not balance. It is a double standard, and it raises serious questions about bias.

It is equally important to acknowledge a dimension that is routinely ignored: the extensive measures taken by Israel to mitigate civilian harm. These have included advance warnings through phone calls, text messages, and leaflet drops; evacuation notices; and the establishment of humanitarian corridors. In an extraordinarily complex urban battlefield against an embedded adversary, such efforts are significant. Ignoring them while advancing the most extreme accusations is not just incomplete—it is fundamentally misleading.

It is also critical to address how casualty figures from Gaza are being used. Numbers are frequently cited as definitive, yet they are often presented without meaningful distinction between civilians and combatants. In a conflict where fighters do not wear uniforms and operate within civilian environments, that distinction is not only difficult—it is essential. Presenting aggregate figures without context, while omitting how many of those killed were engaged in hostilities, does not clarify reality—it obscures it.

It is also worth confronting an inconvenient reality: over time, Gaza’s population has grown significantly. That fact alone does not resolve the legal debate—but it does highlight how casually the most extreme terminology is being deployed.

And here we go again.

This is not the MFA’s first display of profoundly poor judgment. In October 2023, mere days after the atrocities of October 7, the museum planned to host a Palestinian Film Festival in a building named for its Jewish philanthropists, Carl and Ruth Shapiro—individuals whose generosity helped sustain the institution itself. That the MFA would move forward with such programming in that setting, at that moment, revealed a striking lapse in judgment and sensitivity. The inclusion of a comedy, Weekend in Gaza, only underscored the disconnect. It ultimately took sustained pressure from outside voices—not internal reflection—for the museum to reverse course.

Now, once again, the MFA finds itself advancing programming and messaging that many view as deeply biased and fundamentally irresponsible. At some point, repeated “misjudgments” stop looking like accidents and start looking like a pattern.

And that pattern raises serious questions.

For decades, the MFA has been supported by donors who believed they were sustaining a space dedicated to culture, education, and intellectual honesty. Instead, they are now confronted with an institution that appears willing to substitute ideological positioning for disciplined thought.

That is not what they signed up for.

There is a broader and more troubling dimension as well. When Israel is singled out for the most extreme accusation available—without legal adjudication, without consistent standards, and without comparable scrutiny applied elsewhere—it raises unavoidable concerns about bias. At a minimum, it reflects a collapse of intellectual consistency. At worst, it veers into something far more concerning.

Museums do not exist outside accountability. If anything, they should be held to higher standards, not lower ones.

Those standards include:

Respect for legal precision

Commitment to balance and context

Awareness of the historical weight of language

The MFA is failing on all three.

It has every right to host difficult conversations. It does not have the right to present contested accusations as established truth.

And donors should take note. It is entirely reasonable—indeed necessary—to rethink continued support for institutions that abandon neutrality and use their platforms to advance one-sided and highly charged narratives.

Institutions depend on trust. Once that trust is eroded, it is not easily rebuilt.

The MFA still has a choice: return to its core mission—education, preservation, and thoughtful engagement—or continue down the path of ideological advocacy. It cannot do both. At some point, this stops being about a single misstep and becomes about institutional character. The MFA may believe it is taking a stand—but in doing so, it risks losing the very foundation on which it was built. And once that foundation cracks, the damage is not easily undone.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)