References to the Israel-Hamas War

I write to praise the Alumni Weekly’s referring to the Mideast war as the Israel-Hamas war in contradistinction to Michael Solis’ letter in the May 2026 edition. Mr. Solis would have us call that war a genocide. “Genocide” is a simple word derived from the Greek geno and the Latin cïdium meaning the killing of a race. I suppose we can adopt a Lewis Carroll approach and have words mean whatever we want them to mean, but unless we redefine every war and every armed conflict in which civilians are unfortunately killed as a genocide, it would seem to me that calling a war a “war” is probably the right thing to do. By the way, the only participant that has pledged to achieve a genocide is Hamas.