It's a question that editors around the country are struggling with as their news organizations come under increasing criticism for alleged bias in their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm afraid Webster's New World Dictionary isn't much help. It defines militant this way: "at war, fighting . . . ready and willing to fight; especially vigorous or aggressive in support or promotion of a cause." A terrorist is "a person or thing causing intense fear" and uses "force or the threat of force to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, esp. such use as a political weapon or policy . . ."

The madness in the Mideast is all of those things and more, and the words you find in Webster's don't begin to describe just how horrible the terrorism and the military retaliation that follows each suicide bomber's success is in the daily lives of the Israelis and the Palestinians. When a Palestinian suicide bomber recently boarded a bus in Jerusalem and blew 20 men, women and children to bits, most of the wire service reports I saw, including one from the Associated Press, said the carnage was the work of Palestinian "militants."

For me, it's not a hard call. Acts of terror are committed by terrorists, and the horrific bus attack on Israeli civilians, like the dozens of suicide bombings that preceded it, was an act of cold, indiscriminate terror. So why do so many news organizations insist on describing terrorists as militants? I don't think militants set out to deliberately kill children.[...]

Manning Pynn, the Sentinel's public editor, recently wrote that despite the style committee decision, the paper will continue to use "militant" to describe Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, both of which are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. "The term "terrorist' certainly expresses judgment: It imputes to the person or organization being described the motive of trying to instill fear. "Militant' seems to me much more neutral," Pynn wrote.

Foolish me. I thought instilling fear is exactly what Hamas and Islamic Jihad mean to do when they send their suicide bombers into markets, restaurants and buses to kill and terrorize Israeli civilians. I'm all for fair and balanced reporting (I hope the Fox cable news network doesn't slap me with a lawsuit for trademark infringement), but I also believe that words do matter. And if the word "terrorism" is to have any real meaning, then blowing up a bus crowded with women and children must be condemned for what it is - an act of terrorism.