Anscombe\u2019s stance at the University of Oxford 70 years ago challenged a general consensus among western political leaders that using nuclear weapons to end the second World War<\/a> was justified. She set out her thinking in a pamphlet still referenced today in moral philosophy: Mr Truman\u2019s Degree.<\/p>\n \u201cChoosing to kill the innocent as a means to your ends is always murder,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Anscombe wasn\u2019t a pacifist. Killing innocent civilians \u201cis not necessarily murder\u201d, she said, \u201ceven if you know as a matter of statistic certainty\u201d that such deaths will take place as a downstream effect of military force. What qualifies as murder is the intent to kill innocent people.<\/p>\n While Truman might argue the nuclear attack hastened the end of war and spared further loss of life in combat, there is no escaping the fact that the US set out to kill men, women and children indiscriminately. It is estimated that between 120,000 people and double that number ultimately perished.<\/p>\n Anscombe\u2019s essay is highly relevant to modern discussions on the limits of legitimate military action. And it came to mind after watching NAZA<\/a>, a chilling and impactful documentary on the Israel Defense Forces<\/a>\u2019 (IDF) bombing campaign in Gaza<\/a> that began after the Hamas<\/a> terror attack of October 7th, 2023. The film comprises interviews with 24 anonymised soldiers and intelligence personnel exploring the IDF\u2019s policy on \u201ccollateral damage\u201d, or NAZA as it\u2019s known militarily (short for nezek agavi in Hebrew).<\/p>\n Shocking claims are made that the IDF uses artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> to help select targets, using crude formulae to decide how many civilian casualties are permitted in each airstrike. Some interviewees testify that \u201c20 NAZA\u201d \u2013 killing 20 civilians in order to target one suspected Hamas member \u2013 is routinely allowed. One veteran claims a strike endangering 500 civilians was approved to target a single Hamas member. The IDF denies this and other allegations in the film, while Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu<\/a> has branded NAZA\u2019s Israeli directors as enemies of the state.<\/p>\n The documentary strengthens the case for hauling Netanyahu before a war crimes tribunal. But, strangely, it may weaken the case for describing what has been happening in Gaza as genocide by the strictest, legal definition of that word. Under international law, to constitute genocide there must be \u201cproven intent\u201d to exterminate a specific population. However, none of those interviewed testified to deliberately trying to kill civilians.<\/p>\n If they are representative of IDF thinking then it suggests what lies at the heart of the Israeli war machine is not so much murderous intent as callousness, inhumanity and a sickening indifference to the scale of Palestinian suffering.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Naza: Why Israel doesn\u2019t want the world to see this movieOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Some will recoil at this line of thinking, and it feels distasteful to be mulling over the meaning of words when more than 74,000 people in Gaza lie dead, according to local estimates. However, Anscombe insisted on clearly defined moral concepts, without which, she believed, ethical reasoning would collapse altogether.<\/p>\n Anscombe was born in Limerick on March 18th, 1919. Her father was a captain in the British army posted to Munster during the War of Independence so the family didn\u2019t stick around Ireland long. In academic stints at Cambridge and Oxford, she established herself as one of the greatest moral philosophers of her generation and became a close confidante of Ludwig Wittgenstein<\/a>. The two endlessly discussed the limits of morality and linguistics \u2013 and when Wittgenstein moved to Dublin in 1948 to recuperate from illness, Anscombe joined him for a fortnight in Ross\u2019s Hotel (now the Ashling Hotel) on Parkgate Street where he had lodgings.<\/p>\n Anscombe, who was Catholic, continued to work on the idea of intention for decades. Establishing intent is far from straightforward, and it is beyond the scope of this column to settle the argument in the case of Israel. At least one IDF insider interviewed for NAZA supported the argument that Israel\u2019s actions amounted to genocide. And there are numerous examples of innocent civilians being killed by the IDF as a means to an end (for example, the end of creating a security buffer zone) \u2013 which is the definition of murder in Anscombe\u2019s book.<\/p>\n![\"Hiroshima](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/JSMF2PEOKW275OXJD5ELCW7PLY.jpg\")
Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb in the second World War. Photograph: Keystone\/Getty Images <\/p>\n