Suicide bombers strike civilian targets in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and National Public Radio quite reasonably labels the attacks "terror" and the attackers "terrorists," but when — at almost the same time — Palestinian suicide bombers launch five attacks against Israelis, NPR reporters, and hosts, as they have in the past, virtually banish the word "terror" from their vocabulary.

Is this because NPR believes that Israelis, even women and children on a Tel Aviv bus, are not "innocents," or perhaps that, by definition, those who attack Israelis cannot be terrorists? While some might consider these possibilities farfetched, NPR's online style guide for reporters suggests otherwise. In the guide, available here, NPR instructs that the word terrorism "connotes" that the victims are "innocents," clearly indicating that if the victims of an attack are not innocent, then the attack is not terror. To drive the point home, NPR's definition then explicitly questions whether Palestinian attacks against Israelis should be termed terrorism:

terrorism, terrorist — Terrorism is the act of causing terror, usually for political purposes, and it connotes that the terror is perpetrated on innocents. Thus, the bombing of a civilian airliner clearly is a terrorist act, but an attack on an army convoy, even if away from the battlefield, is not. Do not ape government usage. The Israeli government, for instance, routinely refers to PLO actions as terrorist. A journalist should use independent criteria to judge whether the term is accurate. [Emphasis added.]

If this is what NPR reporters and hosts are taught and are expected to follow, then it is little surprise that the attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, which clearly targeted innocent civilians, were routinely described by NPR employees as terror perpetrated by terrorists. Here are some examples (we do not count instances in which NPR guests used the word terror — the issue is how NPR uses the word):[...]