Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Shikli rejected Netanyahu’s proposed name of the “Renaissance War” for the war between Israel and Hamas, calling it inappropriate and instead proposed the “Generation War.”
This was stated by Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism, Amichai Shekli (Likud). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu The desire to suggest the “Renaissance War” as the official name for the war between Israel and Hamas is “inappropriate for various reasons,” in a post on X/Twitter on Saturday.
Acknowledging that his views might constitute “unpopular opinion”, Sheckley suggested the “Genesis War” as an alternative name, and gave several reasons why he thought it was a better choice.
“Technically, the name is taken. The War of Independence is also called the War of Renaissance at the initiative of David Ben-Gurion,” he said.
Shikli also said the name was inappropriate, because the word “renaissance” is “a heavy word with deep meaning in Jewish history, representing the transition from the two-thousand-year exile that culminated in the terrible Holocaust to the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” he said in his tweet.
“We must leave the 1948 fighters and the Yishuv leaders led by Ben-Gurion what belongs to them.”
The Israeli army on the southern border with Gaza. October 16, 2025. (Credit: Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90)
Many options for names
Netanyahu has wanted to change the name since December 2023, and has proposed names such as “Genesis War,” “Gaza War,” and “Simchat Torah War.”
The hostages’ families protested the name change, saying that “there is no revival without the return of all the hostages.”
Checkley also said in his post that the name “Iron Swords,” the current title of the war, “really misses the scale of the event.”
Other government ministers also criticized “Iron Swords”, expressing their dissatisfaction with the name.
He said: “Personally, I will choose the Genesis War because this name expresses, in my view, the intensity of the difficult and long war that we went through and the profound change it brought about in the reality around us.”
The government is scheduled to vote on changing the name at its next meeting on Sunday.