Thanks for your viewpoint.
However, I don't think it helps things along to call Palestinians terrorists, anymore than it was valid to call French or Italian partisans terrorists after their occupation by Germany.
Palestine is an occupied land, if you were not aware of that fact. And it has been occupied since the ethnic cleansing of 1948, when two thirds of the Palestinians were clear forceably from their homes and land in over 470 villages and towns in what is now Israel. Furthermore, the military occupation that began in 1967 of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and formally Gaza makes the Palestinians resisters, just like the French and Italians.
If you are referring to the intentional killing of civilians as terrorism (and that is not really part of the formal definition), then certainly the Israels military is a terrorist organization well beyond what the Palestinians have done in retaliation of the murders of their civilians.
But perhaps worse is that use of the term terrorism conforms to just how Israel has been attempting to frame the IP conflict since 2001: Palestinians terrorists, Israelis victims, in spite of the ongoing occupation. Here a bit from the documentary list in my signature below (click and learn what I am talking about).
Robert Jensen, Professor of Journalism, University of Texas-Austin: "In contrast to the international press, in American media, there is a reversal of cause and effect in that the occupation is framed as a response to the suicide bombings. All of the Palestinian actions are attacks and Israel actions retaliation, is meaningful. Retaliation suggests a defensive stance against violence initiated by someone else. It places a responsibility for the violence on the party provoking the retaliation. In other words, Palestinian violence like suicide bombings is seen as cause and the origin of the conflict. Since the September 11 attack on the US, Israel's PR strategy has been to frame all Palestinian actions, violent or not, as terrorism. To the extent that they can do that they have repackaged the illegal occupation as part of the war on terrorism."
It is not just invalid to cast the Palestinians as terrorists. It condones Israel's military occupation and all of the brutality that it has entailed for 41 years now.
I am not calling all Palestinians terrorists. But some Palestinians commit acts of violence, and these acts are as reproachable and disgusting as Israeli violence or any political oppression going on from the other side. If you prefer the term "war" that's fine - but a war has combatants on both sides.
And you cannot omit facts if you want other liberals to take you seriously - you dash off facts about "occupied lands" from 1948, 1967, and 1973 and OMIT the fact that Arab nations attacked Israel each time. The US has occupied lands after wars in situations such as these - places like Texas and California, which Mexico is never going to get back, like it or not.
Again, I'm really not disagreeing with you so much as I am hopeful that both your side and the Israeli side will tone down the rhetoric and realize that each side has valid claims, and begin more reasonable discussions. It is not helpful to cast one side, in your case, Israel, as the "evil" side.
