alt Hacker NewsTargeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.
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The issue is that Israel has no idea where those pagers were at the time of the attack, civilians were directly hurt by the explosions: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/survivors-of-israels-page...
Not only military leadership was killed, there was a significant amount of civilians being harmed.
Even if you drop a bomb to target a military personnel, but you drop it in the middle of busy city, this will be a war crime, as you didn’t do anything to avoid civilian casualties, and disregarded them.
The Irish terrorists that were mostly the responsible to put word "terrorism" into political discourse targeted almost exclusively politicians and military. And targeted way better than that Israel attack.
> Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition.
I mean, you're not wrong: the State seeks monopoly on violence; the kind of damages it can inflict, where, when and however it wants. Everyone else is ... a terrorist, and whatever they do is ... terrorism.
> communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah
Replace "Hezbollah" with "the US Govt" and you'll arrive at some answer.
Btw, off-duty / non-combat personnel aren't deemed to be "at war".
Two things
Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized.
Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in the military themselves.