Why Not Call a Terrorist Group a Terrorist Group?

The question has to be asked this morning when one reads their NY Times newspaper: Why doesn’t the NY Times call Hamas a terrorist group?

The first paragraph of an article titled “Israeli Says Iran is Training Hamas Men” .
“The chief of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, said Monday that the Islamic movement Hamas had sent dozens of men from Gaza to Iran for military training.”
-NY Times, March 6, 2007

Actually the US Department of State lists Hamas (in Arabic, an acronym for "Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia" -- Islamic Resistance Movement -- and a word meaning zeal) as a “terrorist group”[1] and has for many years. In fact it was on October 8, 1997 that the Clinton administration designated Hamas a terrorist organization. The Clinton administration’s most frequent foreign leader was none other than PLO Leader Yasser Arafat and so its designation of Hamas was important.

Even the European Union classifies Hamas as a terrorist group. Europe is pro-Palestine too as exemplified by France President Chirac’s wife unveiling the Palestinian flag off the President’s balcony in Paris. Also, Canada and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Watch all designate Hamas as a terrorist organization, so why does the NY Times describe it with the benign term “Islamic movement”?

[1] http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/37191.htm