Terrorism is untargeted violence against civil population, with the aim to instill fear and influence policy. Destruction of a military or military-related object by a warring country is not terrorism, it is an act of war. In war, objects that can have military significance - bridges, roads, factories, warehouses, etc. - are routinely attacked. This has nothing to do with terrorism. Note that Israel and Syria is in the state of war since 1948, when Syria was one of the states that tried to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Unlike some other Arab countries, Syria never made peace with Israel and never really wanted to.
> Terrorism is untargeted violence against civil population
That definition might have been true immediately after 2001-09-11, but now the term has been diluted and coopted to cover any anti-government military action. Arguably this is just double-speak; I consider this term to be borderline meaningless at this point.
See for example Russia/Georgia [1], or more recently the "terrorists" opposing the Syrian government [2].
There's no good reason to participate in it and make matters worse. We virtually universally denounce terrorism exactly because it is indiscriminately harming innocent people just to scare others, which is considered immoral by the majority of modern moral systems. Destroying military objects in the course of war, while being, as any part of the war is, regrettable course of events - does not carry nearly the same moral stigma.
Some people participating in Syria war are undoubtedly terrorists - ISIS and al-Qaeda make no secret of its adherence to the terrorist tactics, among other war crimes they commit - others are guerilla, or self-defence forces (e.g. Peshmerga). One should not confuse those if one wants to understand what is going on.
When words get diluted like that, you can easily counter through elaboration and specificity, as the parent did. In doing so, you can retain the meaning as you see fit.
All people are free to define their own definitions. In fact, we all do, without exception: no two people hold identical definitions for the same words. The only thing that matters is the ability to be understood, ideally to a high degree. Elaboration on what you mean provides for that even in the case of widespread dilution.
Well, you could argue that if the state did it, it's a technicality not to call it terrorism and the definition could be extended. But here the picture is completely different - the target is a legit militarily significant object (and not just some shoe factory or ration storage, but a whopping nuclear center), and the goal is to destroy the object, not to indiscriminately harm civilian population in order to scare them and achieve a political goal.
> When a recognized government does it, it's generally called a war crime.
That it is a war crime in the context of international armed conflict (or against humanity otherwise) doesn't stop it from being terrorism, just as a state actor committint genocide doesn't make it any less genocide, though that too is either a war crime or crime against humanity.
The Germans bombed the hell out of civilians indiscriminately all over Europe, including London and most other large cities in the UK years before the allies bombed German cities.
Retaliation-in-kind during open war isn’t the same thing as terrorism.
> If a government directly does it, it's not called terrorism.
Considering that the modern use of “terrorist” and “terrorism” traced back directly to description of actors and actions associated with the Terror in Revolutionary France, that would be erroneous. It's true that much of the modern focus is on international terrorism (which necessarily excludes internal state terrorism, which is a form of intranational terrorism), state terrorism remains a significant thing (both internationally and internally.)
It's not erroneous, terms evolve. There's no formal definition of terrorism, so we're just talking about how it's used in common conversation and media. Maybe it's just me, but in modern usage I've only ever seen references to non-governmental terrorism and "state sponsored terrorism", which is different than a direct government action. When a government does it it's just modern warfare.
> Maybe it's just me, but in modern usage I've only ever seen references to non-governmental terrorism and "state sponsored terrorism", which is different than a direct government action.
State-sponsored terrorism is broader than, but includes, direct government action. Direct actions by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force are often described as “state sponsored terrorism”.
I think the more nuanced point would be "If _our_ government directly does it, it's not called terrorism."
The US government's support for anti-government organizations in the Middle East (e.g. in Syria, Libya, Sudan, etc) is characterized as terrorism by the Iranian government, and many others (Russia, etc).
(I'm not passing any judgement on the moral equivalency of these positions, just pointing out the fuzziness of the linguistics).
This title is actually fine.
But the other ones need to be more objective.