How Israel's wars and military operations get their names

In Israel, military operations are named by the army and wars are named by the government, and the two processes work on different clocks. An operation receives its code name before the first shot, usually from within the General Staff and often from a pool of prepared words. A war is named afterward, sometimes months or years afterward, by a ministerial committee and a cabinet vote, because the name decides how the fallen are commemorated, which decorations soldiers receive and how the event will be taught. Between the two sits the public, which frequently ignores both and settles on a name of its own.

Operation names: code words chosen in advance

An operation's name begins as a security measure. It lets planners refer to a plan without describing it, and it has to be ready before the plan is executed. The IDF does not publish its naming procedure. In 2014, when journalists asked how the Gaza operation of that summer was named, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit told The Times of Israel that it could not elaborate on the process. Israeli sociologist Yagil Levy suggested in the same report that names are drawn from a bank of words held in the military's computer systems, after which officers choose the one that best suits the operation's spirit.

The computer story has limits. In 2005, senior officers told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the name of the Gaza disengagement had been picked at random by computer; a newspaper investigation reported soon after that commanders had chosen it deliberately, for its message of brotherhood. The episode suggests a common pattern: the bank supplies candidates, people make the choice.

It also shows why names attract scrutiny. The disengagement's first working name was dropped after critics pointed out that it came from a prayer recited in memory of the dead. A name meant only for internal use becomes public the moment the operation begins, and from then on it is quoted in headlines, carved into memory and, for the families of soldiers killed in it, attached to a loss. Planners in 1948 had more freedom. Many operations of the War of Independence were named casually, after a commander, a place or a word from the Bible that happened to fit, and some of those names became the permanent historical labels of decisive battles.

Hebrew operation names tend to fall into a few families:

• Biblical and historical figures: Operation Nachshon in April 1948 took its name from Nachshon ben Aminadav, who in Jewish tradition was the first to step into the Red Sea; Operation Hiram in October 1948 was named for the king of Tyre who appears in the Book of Kings.
• Fallen commanders: Operation Yoav in October 1948 honored Yitzhak Dubno, a Palmach officer known as "Yoav," who planned the defense of Negba and Yad Mordechai and was killed in an air raid on Negba.
• Places and landscapes: Operation Horev, the final offensive against Egypt in December 1948, used the biblical name of Mount Sinai.
• Images of strength or protection: Homat Magen ("Defensive Shield," 2002), Shomer HaHomot ("Guardian of the Walls," 2021, from the Book of Isaiah) and Am KeLavi ("Rising Lion," 2025, from the Book of Numbers).

Sometimes a name is changed after the fact. The Entebbe rescue of July 1976 was planned as Operation Thunderbolt and was renamed Operation Yonatan in memory of its ground commander, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the only Israeli soldier killed in the raid.

Why the English name is often different

Since the 2000s, Israeli operations have usually had two official names, a Hebrew one and an English one released by the IDF, and they are frequently not translations of each other. The Gaza operation of December 2008 was Oferet Yetzuka, "cast lead," a phrase from a children's Hanukkah poem by Hayim Nahman Bialik; in English it kept the literal "Cast Lead." But Amud Anan in November 2012, literally "Pillar of Cloud," the biblical cloud that guided and shielded the Israelites, became "Pillar of Defense" in English. Tzuk Eitan in July 2014, literally "firm cliff" or "solid rock," became "Protective Edge." According to The Times of Israel, the IDF's Arabic-language spokesman said the English version had been adjusted to sound more defensive.

The gap between the two names is deliberate. A Hebrew name speaks to Israelis in their own cultural references; an English name is written for foreign governments and media and tends to stress protection. On this site both appear: the Hebrew name in Hebrew pages, the established English name in English ones, with a transliteration where it helps, as in the record on Operation Protective Edge.

War names: decided by the government

Naming a war is a formal act. Recognizing an event as a war has consequences that an operation name does not: it defines the period for which soldiers receive a campaign ribbon, the wording on gravestones in military cemeteries and the status of the fallen in national commemoration. The decision belongs to the government, advised by the Ministerial Committee for Symbols and Ceremonies.

The war of the summer of 2006 shows how this works. The fighting began on July 12, 2006, as an operation, which the IDF soon named Change of Direction (Shinui Kivun). According to Ynetnews, in March 2007 the ministerial committee chaired by Minister Ya'akov Edery first decided that the fighting should be defined as a war, then considered names such as "War of the North" before recommending the Second Lebanon War. The cabinet adopted the name unanimously on March 25, 2007, in time for that year's Memorial Day, and approved the related decorations at the same meeting. The detailed account is in the Ynetnews report on how the cabinet approved the war's name (opens in a new tab).

The 1982 war has had a longer road. It was launched as Operation Peace for Galilee (Mivtza Shlom HaGalil), a name that became bitterly ironic as the fighting reached Beirut and the army stayed in Lebanon for eighteen years. Once there was a second Lebanon war, there was a first. In January 2012, Yad LaBanim, the organization of bereaved families, formally asked the defense minister and the ministerial committee to rename it; the IDF's own historical pages and most Israeli usage now call it the First Lebanon War, and this site files it as the Lebanon War of 1982.

Swords of Iron and the War of Revival

The war that began on October 7, 2023, was named by the IDF on its first day: Haravot Barzel, "Swords of Iron." For two years the name stood, and it was carved on many gravestones. On October 19, 2025, the government approved a proposal brought by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to rename it Milhemet HaTkuma, "the War of Revival," as its official and permanent name. According to The Times of Israel and Walla, the decision passed by a majority; one minister voted against and one abstained, and opposition leader Yair Lapid was among its critics. The Defense Ministry said any change to inscriptions on gravestones would be coordinated with bereaved families.

The dispute illustrates why war names matter. Supporters said the name reflected a national recovery after the worst attack in the country's history; critics said it was being chosen while the war's political responsibility was still contested, and that many Israelis already called it simply the October 7 war. This site files the main record as the Israel-Hamas war and names both official names in the text, so readers can find it under either.

Names given by the public, and by the other side

Many of Israel's best-known names did not come from any committee. "The Six-Day War" described the June 1967 war by its length and stuck almost at once. "The War of Attrition" described a strategy. "The Yom Kippur War" took its name from the day the attack came, October 6, 1973. The first and longest naming question, for the war of 1947 to 1949, has several established Israeli names, among them the War of Independence and the War of Liberation (Milhemet HaShihrur).

The same wars have other names elsewhere, and a reader of international sources needs to know them:

• 1947 to 1949: the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in neutral English usage; the Nakba, "the catastrophe," among Palestinians, a term that refers above all to the displacement of Palestinians.
• 1956: the Sinai campaign or Operation Kadesh in Israel; the Suez crisis in Britain and much of the world; the Tripartite Aggression in Egypt.
• 1967: the Six-Day War; in Arabic often an-Naksa, "the setback."
• 1973: the Yom Kippur War in Israel; the October War or the Ramadan War in Egypt and Syria.

None of these names is neutral. Each records a point of view about what happened. Even within Israel, a name can shift meaning over time. Peace for Galilee was intended as a promise and became a reproach; Defensive Shield, the 2002 operation in the West Bank cities, is remembered by many Israelis as the moment the second intifada turned, and by Palestinians through the battle of Jenin. The practice on Wars of Israel is to use the established name in each language as the title, and to mention the other side's name where it helps the reader find and understand other accounts.