Media Bias Item: If There's a Military, Why Are They "Militants"?

The New York Times insistently terms those who engage in terror as "militants". I've noted numerous examples over these past three years of blogging and for a decade previously including.

Now, read this:-

A spokesman for the military wing of Hamas threatened to renew suicide bombings in Israel, but his comments were not confirmed by more senior leaders...Israeli aircraft continued to take aim at Hamas — its military wing and members of the Hamas-dominated Executive Force, a parallel paramilitary police unit...Using more professional tactics and clearly better motivated, Hamas fighters control northern Gaza and much of Gaza City.

In other words, unless someone can correct me, the NYT as all the other major news agencies, outlets, newspapers and networks know very well that Hamas is "military" and "paramilitary" and that even if for some strange reason cannot bring themselves to describe Hamas members as "terrorists", they have no reason to term them "militants" or "activists".

And a bit on in that report, we read:-

Huda, 60, a widow, lives near the presidential compound in Gaza City, where many clashes have occurred. “We feel imprisoned by the fighting,” she said. “In my apartment, many bullets have come through the windows” and the electricity and water have been cut off.

She did not want to give her surname, but said that she had moved to the apartment of a friend farther from the bullets. “When Palestinians fight each other, it’s very depressing,” she said. “But when the Israelis bomb our feelings are very different, we feel that this is the enemy that we must have the will to challenge.”

Well, so bullets mistakenly do go awry and kill bystanders but only Israel is calumnated for it.