It's not a terrorist attack unless the primary goal is causing terror. The primary goal here was clearly causing damage to Hamas' command structure by putting a few thousand militants in the hospital, and also literally blowing up their communications network.
What would you killing 8+ peole and wounding 2800+? Were it any other actor, there would be absolutely no hesitation in calling it a terrorist attack.
You know who uses pagers? Doctors and nurses. Are they legitimate military targets? Let's just say that a Hezbollah or Hamas commander was killed. What's an acceptable civilian dead or wounded count that takes it out of the realm of a terrorist attack? How many is too many?
I'd call it the lowest number of civilians casualties ever for this large scale of an attack on ones military adversaries embedded within an urban environment.
I think that they are inspiring terror, but terror against operatives. That's a good goal. Terror against civilians is the problem (according to our modern moral code)
