As Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza — which has killed more than 33,000 Gazans — enters its seventh month, Nicaragua sued Germany in the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) for facilitating genocide.

Nicaragua charged that, “Germany has provided political, financial and military support to Israel fully aware at the time of authorization that the military equipment would be used in the commission of great breaches of international law,” adding, “The military equipment provided by Germany enabling Israel to perpetrate genocidal acts and other atrocities, included supplies to the front line and warehouses, and assurances of future supplies such as ammunition, technology and diverse components necessary for the Israeli military.” Nicaragua also cited Germany’s defunding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which “provides essential support to the civilian population.”

Germany is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel, accounting for 30 percent of imports between 2019 and 2023. The United States, Israel’s chief enabler, provided it with 69 percent of its arms imports during the same period.

On October 12, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated,

At this moment, there is only one place for Germany: the place at the side of Israel. This is what we mean when we say that Israel’s security is a German raison d’État. Our own history, our responsibility arising from the Holocaust, makes it our perpetual duty to stand up for the existence and security of the State of Israel. This responsibility guides us.

In a historic hearing on April 8 and 9, Nicaragua presented its case to the ICJ and Germany denied the charges. Nicaragua asked the World Court to order five provisional measures “as a matter of extreme urgency” for Germany’s alleged “participation in the ongoing plausible genocide and serious breaches of international humanitarian law and other peremptory norms of general international law occurring in the Gaza Strip.”

Daniel Müller, a lawyer on Nicaragua’s legal team, reminded the ICJ that 10 days prior, when the court ordered additional provisional measures against Israel in South Africa’s case, it called the living conditions in Gaza “catastrophic” and the recent developments “exceptionally grave.” The court found “an imminent risk of irreparable harm to ‘the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide’.”

“Nicaragua is acting not only on its own behalf on the basis of the rights and obligations conferred by the peremptory norms invoked, but also on behalf of the Palestinian people that is being subjected to one of the most destructive military actions in modern history,” Carlos José Argüello Gómez, Nicaragua’s ambassador to the Netherlands, told the court.

Gómez said that although Nicaragua hasn’t been subjected to as much inhuman treatment and destruction as the Palestinians have suffered for more than 75 years, “it has also been subject to intervention and military attacks for most of its existence and feels empathy for the Palestinian people.”

In the 1984 case of Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), the ICJ ruled against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, which included the mining of ports, the destruction of oil installations, and the training, arming and equipping of the Contras (who were trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government).

Gómez stated the Israeli government “should not be confused and equated with the Jewish people,” noting that Jewish victims of the Holocaust “would feel sympathy and empathize with the more than 30,000 civilians, including 25,000 mothers and children massacred so far in Palestine, and the 20,000 children orphaned and the two mothers being killed every hour.”

The Genocide Convention imposes on third parties the obligation to prevent genocide from the time they become aware that genocide might be committed. Gómez told the court “there can be no question” that Germany “was well aware and is well aware of at least the serious risk of genocide being committed, most certainly after your Order of 26 January [for provisional measures].”

Gómez argued that Germany was on notice of Israel’s international........

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