As well, I don’t think there’s any argument that the Hamas attack on Israel could be anything other than a terrorist attack (without attribution) because they targeted civilians with the specific intent to kidnap.

However, since Israel as a nation is condoning the military action I don’t think it could strictly be said it’s terrorism.

And now you've identified why journalists choose not to make that distinction. You are obviously free to make whatever distinction you want.

Personally I feel the situation over the past 100+ years in Palestine has been so fucked up, there's no simple black and white "good buy retaliating" and "bad guy doing the terrorism".