Well as one who fought against them, I would not have a problem with defining those who fight against soldiers/police as 'other than terrorists', though western civilisation has a problem with the fact that they don't wear uniforms, not 'fair' somehow.
Those who purposely use civilians as targets and ensuring deaths of their own civilians for propaganda purposes are dispicable and evil terrorists.
The problem comes when 'freedom fighters' fight in civilian clothing, it becomes extremely difficult to diffrentiate between a civilian killed in battle or a freedom fighter whose gun has been hurridely kicked aside for the media to take a photo of a 'dead civilian'. A good example would be the disparity between the numbers of Hezbollah that the Israeli army claim to have killed and that which the UN has counted. When they are all wearing civies and their weapons are long gone by the time the 'counters' get there, who is to say?
The thing is, and this is important, if you want to fight against an army, however just your cause, you cannot cry foul when you get killed just because the army or country is bigger than you! Unlike the way countries see it, that anyone fighting against the incumbent governement is a traitor, a freedom fighter should be treated as a combatant. If you start a war then you have to accept the consequences of losing a war with all that entails.
The US made a huge mistake with Guatmano. The fighters should have been put in POW camps and treated like POW's according to the Geneva convention. It should have been stated that they would be let out when the war is over and when they are no longer enemy combatants albeit this might be a very very long time. Trying them as criminals is just stupid.
The Palestinian people elected a governement that has declared war against Israel. Fair enough, they have a right to so choose, that is democracy. But they cannot fight on one hand and complain of closed borders, the drying up of international charity, etc on the other. Either you are at war or you are not. You cannot fire on a country and expect them to turn the other cheek. If they were only fighting against the soldiers of which I was one at the beginning of the 2nd Intafada, then I would be happy not to label them as terrorists, it would be a war and however much I disagree with their objectives, the war would be conducted as a war. Soldiers know that they may die in war. We mourn them as I mourned friends but it isn't a tragedy when it's man against man and both are armed (Yes, of course it's a tragedy but not on the scale of civilians being killed by armed men). It's when civilians are targeted as civilians, not as unfortunate victims but as specific targets, when civilians are used with the sole purpose of ensuring that the media will have plenty pictures of dead babies the next morning to gloat over on their front pages, that is when it becomes terrorism and inexcuseable and utterly dispicable.
My question is whether the media has a responsibility for the use that terrorists are making of them as a propaganda tool?
Would the next 'Lebanon' occur in the same way if the media had said 'we're not doing your dirty work for you, if you ensure the deaths of your own civilians then we are not going to do anything but say, terrorists, this is your own fault don't come crying to us'. We all know what the headlines did say at the time and we all know exactly what strategy will be used by terrorists for the future, it worked like a dream this time...
