Israeli bombings

In a number of months, Israel has bombed Syria twice, Sudan once, Egypt a few times, and Palestine many times, and Lebanon suffers from daily violations of its air space by Israel.  Yet, the US media always consistently manages to rationalize and casually refers to Israeli bombings and categorizes them all as part of "defense".  Can you imagine if an Arab group were to bomb Israel as it unloads weapons from ships? Would that be considered also "pre-emptive" and self-defense?