Who are the real terrorists

Recently we have seen the Australian Muslim Advisory Committee recomend to the Australian government that Hezbollah should be taken off the terrorist list, a request that John Howard claims he won't be swayed on. The media also continue to include terrorist as a prefix whenever it talks about Hezbollah. But are they terrorists? and what actually is a terrorist?

Most people would argue that terrorists are people who use terror to achieve political aims. That is, they create terror by deliberatly targetting enemy civillians. So does that describe Hezbollah? Zionists argue that it does, that unlike the Israel Defence Force Hezbollah targets civillians.

So lets now look at the facts. Lets compare the casualty figures between Israeli's and Lebanese and look at the proportion of civillians who have been killed.

Israel claims that 68 Israelis have been killed in the conflict which includes 41 military personnel. That leaves a civillian death toll of 27. That is 39.7% of casualties have been civillians.

Lebanon claims that 900 Lebanese have been killed. With figures of Hezbollah and military deaths ranging from 106 (from the UK Guardian) to 300 (from Israel) leaving a civillian death toll of between 794 and 600. That puts the percentage of civillian deaths at between 88.22% and 66.66% of all Lebanese casualities.

Those figures beggar the question 'Who are the real terrorists?'