But I think a general distinction is the targeting of combatants vs civilians.
There is a difference between infiltrating military or para-military organizations or operations and intentionally targeting mass casualties of civilians for attention.
How governments, media, etc. use that word is often politically loaded and not based on some agreed objective definition.
Preemptively invalidating all non-state actors is just a way for people with power to avoid challenges to it. Every single oppressive regime describes rebels as terrorists and employs circular arguments to assert its own legitimacy. Using this to dismiss military attacks on military targets is, frankly, bullshit.
If everyone in your ‘private actor’ group wears uniforms, acts in the open (ie marches in formation, operates tanks instead of setting boobie traps, etc), and then attacks military operations directly it’s going to require an extreme amount of squinting to call that group terrorists.
Whoever is running it would probably get a pretty fair title of warlord. But they’re different.
At the same time, it a gov’t organization runs around bombing civilian targets in a campaign to scare everyone in their opponents country out of their mind, pretty hard to not call them terrorists.
I don’t remember reading any attacks on civilians in the revolutionary war. The civilians would have all been Americans, so it wouldn’t make sense.
The British regarded them as traitors, and would have hung them for treason and sedition.
Funny exemple knowing France sunk a Greenpeace vessel. That act has been called "state terrorism".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warri...
You can't just walk across a recognized international border and do the "right" thing without a consent, regardless of how right or wrong it had been. That's an act of war, technically.
There's just a distinction to be made from intentionally killing civilians for the purpose of causing terror versus targeting a group that you are in an open military hostility with. The second one, as you say, is basically just war. And war has historically also included civilian casualties.
Flying a plane full of civilians into a building full of civilians, or detonating a bomb in a public square full of civilians, are pretty clear examples of what "terrorism" is. They aren't actions meant to directly attack the capability of an enemy to wage war against you.
What governments and media choose to label "terrorism" or "terrorist groups" however is inherently political and not done following some agreed, objective definition.
They’ve been at war for 50 years, like, officially the war declaration was never dropped.
So recent missile volleys can’t be treated in isolation, despite that making sense
How would you call that?
There is already a war, so far it just has been avoided to become an all out war.
You might want to read up on the killing of bin Laden, Entebbe raid, and many other similar operations.
It’s part of the deal when you’re a high speed, low drag type. Be good, or get dead.
They could decide to build up their country and Israel wouldn't interfere.
If a platoon of American CIA agents went around the US executing 'bad people' (definition problems notwithstanding),
That would be bad.
When Afghans took up arms against occupying American soldiers, they were routinely called terrorists in American press and media.
When Muslims fight America or Israel, they are called terrorists. When the situation is reversed, that label isn't applied.
Although I mostly recall the word "insurgent" being used for local fighters in those cases.
Most of the Afghan fighters who took shots at American soldiers weren't motivated by some sort of boogieman religious extremism. They were simply shooting at armed foreigners who invaded their country. They weren't terrorists by any reasonable definition of the but were called so anyway because they happened to be Muslim and dared to defy America.