Is this a meaningful distinction? I worry that, by using the language of bad terrorism versus good military action, you're endorsing the same casuistic framework used by Israel. Arguing about whether or not one side or other targets civilians strikes me as a distraction: "a military action which did not kill civilians would be justified; therefore, our action, which kills civilians, but only as an unfortunate contingency, is also justified." Of course that's bullshit - military action always involves killing civilians (leaving aside the curious forgetting here that military targets are people, who it might also be wrong to kill); the pretense that the deaths are merely some kind of unfortunate side-effect is a dangerous delusion.
The point being, there's no need to deny that Hezbollah are responsible for civilian deaths in order to defend them. All this dancing around about combatants and non-combatants is part of the blood-soaked moralism of just war theory, which has always been an alibi of imperialism. Better to ask, can Hezbollah hope to achieve anything of value through violent action against Israel? If the answer were no, there would be no reason to support them even if they were the most scrupulous followers of international law. If Hezbollah's goals are worth supporting (and I think their current defense of Lebanon is), the only question worth asking is can their means support their goals. It might be useful for our personal moral reflection to consider other moral justifications or criticisms of Hezbollah's tactics, but I don't see it having any relevance to our political attitude to Hezbollah.
As Ken MacLeod puts it in an excellent recent blog post:
"War is not civilized, but a regression to the state of nature, and in the state of nature there is no sin. In the state of nature there are, however, necessary and unnecessary evils, and in that respect we still have to make judgements. 'All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient.' If I were to criticise Hizbollah's rocketing of Israel, which in the present circumstances I will not, it would only be on the grounds of its futility, if that could be shown."
http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_kenmacleod_archive.html#115343180929571649
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"Boredom is the threshold to great deeds."
-- Walter Benjamin http://huh.34sp.com/ --------------------------- tim_boetie at fastmail.fm