The title of this post may, at first sight, seem a little baffling. After all, what does the smallish Central American state of Nicaragua have to do with Europe’s largest economy, Germany? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.
Nicaragua was the first country to join the case South Africa v. Israel, in January 2024. Three months later, its government, which has long supported the Palestinian cause, filed a suit at the International Court of Justice accusing Germany, Israel’s second largest arms supplier, of complicity in genocide. The Daniel Ortega government argued that by providing military and financial aid to Israel, Germany is facilitating genocide in Gaza and violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
At the same time as Nicaragua took Germany to court for complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza, it also filed an emergency application demanding that Germany stop supplying weapons to Israel forthwith. Managua argued that Germany had approved arms deliveries worth €326.5 million to Israel in 2023, ten times more than the previous year. Those deliveries, it said, could help facilitate Israel’s genocidal operations in the Gaza Strip.
In May, the ICJ rejected Nicaragua’s emergency request though it denied Germany’s request to dismiss Nicaragua’s lawsuit entirely. The process, it said, could drag on for years. Which brings us to the present.
On Friday (Oct 11), the Ortega government announced that it will break diplomatic relations with Israel, becoming only the fourth country to do since the Gaza offensive began just over a year ago. On the same day, roughly 9,000 kilometres away, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz launched a charm offensive in Israel’s direction, insisting that Germany would soon be supplying it with more weapons, after a sharp fall in deliveries this year prompted accusations that Berlin had deliberately delayed the exports.
“We have supplied weapons and … we have made decisions within the government that will ensure further deliveries in the near future,” Scholz said.
Germany’s “Genocide Clause”
An unnamed senior German government told Politico Europe that there was no formal arms embargo in place, blaming the delays instead on “bottlenecks caused by the retooling of the Bundeswehr and the fact that Germany is sending weapons to Ukraine.” This would certainly chime with our reports that Europe is suffering from acute weapons shortages due to the constant drain of resources for project Ukraine and its general lack of operational capability. As one Belgian general put it in February, Europe’s arms production is in “deep shit.”
But according to some observers, cited by DW, the German government have also been “spooked” by the looming threat of legal action — including Nicaragua’s ICJ accusations of complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
So how did Germany’s coalition government get round this problem? How can it keep furnishing Israel with deadly weapons for its near-constant attacks on civilian targets while putting its mind at ease that it won’t be found guilty of complicity in Israel’s war crimes. According to Germany’s biggest tabloid Bild, the solution, allegedly the brainchild of Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, was simple: tell Israel’s government that it would not receive any further weapons unless it provided written guarantees that said weapons would “not be used in acts of genocide.”
And that, apparently, is all that is needed to absolve Germany and its governing class from all responsibility under international law — the assurance of a government that is already guilty of just about every war crime in the book. Lest we forget, Germany has steadfastly denied that Israel has committed any acts of genocide in Gaza. But there appears to be a world of difference between what it says publicly, and what it thinks, or fears, privately.
Germany asking Israel to sign a “genocide clause” implies it “was aware … of the serious danger that acts of genocide would be committed”, aka 🇩🇪’s prevention duty was triggered.
Asking “promise not to genocide with our weapons” is not a good way to discharge that duty. https://t.co/ugcpm5ik6l
— Janina Dill (@JaninaDill) October 14, 2024
Israel’s written assurances that it would not use Germany weaponry to commit acts of genocide — which some commentators are now calling Germany’s “genocide clause” — arrived last Thursday, a day before Scholz announced to parliament the re-supplying of arms to Israel.
Germany being Germany: Germany reportedly requested Israel sign a “genocide clause” as a condition for continued arms deliveries.
This clause reportedly included a written guarantee from the Israeli government that German weapons would not be used in “acts of genocide.”
The… pic.twitter.com/Gd3ufzWJge
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 14, 2024
Unlike Germany, some governments in Europe are scrambling to put as much distance between themselves and Netanyahu’s far-right government as they can. In late May, three Western European countries, Spain, Ireland and Norway, recognised Palestine as a State. Yesterday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for an international arms embargo against Israel, accusing Netanyahu of aiming to impose “a new regional order by force.” He also urged the EU to suspend its association agreement with Israel.
By contrast, Germany continues to stand by Israel as “its reason of state” (in Scholz’s own words). Even after Israel’s recent pager bombings in Lebanon — as clear-cut an example of State terror as you’re likely to ever see — and its attacks these past few days against United Nations Interim Forces stationed in northern Lebanon, which even the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, has described as “a serious violation of international law and completely unacceptable,” Berlin stands firmly behind Tel Aviv. A case in point:
So here we have German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, justifying Israel bombing children and schools……. pic.twitter.com/brqubQbSuI
— Richard (@ricwe123) October 14, 2024
Meanwhile, in Nicaragua…
The Daniel Ortega government based its decision to sever ties with Israel on a resolution adopted by the country’s National Assembly condemning “the continuous genocide, cruelty, extreme hatred and extermination carried out by the government of Israel.”
“In permanent solidarity with the people and government of Palestine, with the peoples who suffer martyrdom, destruction and barbarism, and in strict adherence to international law and the conventions that govern civilized relations between states and governments of the world, the government of the Republic of Nicaragua breaks all diplomatic relations with the fascist government of Israel,” announced the Ortega government.
The declaration also warned that Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people “is now expanding against the people of Lebanon, and seriously threatening Syria, Yemen and Iran, endangering the peace and security of the region and the world”.
As Al Jazeera notes, the breaking of relations is “largely a symbolic (move), since Israel does not have a resident ambassador in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, and relations between the two nations are nearly non-existent.” The government’s decision to cut ties with Tel Aviv does, however, “add to Israel’s growing isolation on the global stage amid its war on Gaza,” the Qatari news network reported.
Even that is debatable. Granted, Israel has been the target of growing international opprobrium over the past year, particularly from the so-called “Global South”. In January, the ICJ ruled that it is “plausible” that Israel has committed genocide, and judges ordered Tel Aviv to stop killing and causing harm to Palestinians — a ruling that Israel has demonstrably failed to obey. Yet since that ruling, a very small fraction of countries have actually gone to the trouble of withdrawing diplomats or suspending ties with Israel.
Of the 165 countries that recognise Israel, only four have officially cut diplomatic ties with the country since it began its Gaza offensive, according to Wikipedia. What’s more, all of them are in Latin America: Bolivia, Belize, Colombia and now Nicaragua (Venezuela severed its ties with Israel in 2009 while Cuba broke off relations during the Yom Kippur War of 1973). Again according to Wikipedia, a further eight countries have withdrawn their diplomats from Tel Aviv since October 7, 2023: Chile, Brazil, Honduras, Turkey, South Africa, Chad, Bahrain and Jordan.
In early May, Turkey cut all economic ties with Israel, but as Cradle reports, many Turkish companies appear to be circumventing this ban by channelling exports through Palestine. All of which invites the question (which we’ve been mulling since the beginning of this year): why are so few countries willing to take meaningful diplomatic or economic actions, including imposing targeted sanctions, against a rogue state that has not only slaughtered tens of thousands of Gazan civilians but is hell-bent on creating a regional conflagration in the Middle East?
Obviously, it is due to a confluence of factors, including:
- Fear of US-led retaliation. This is at the top of the list for good reason. The US may be a hegemon in chronic decline but it can still inflict bully other countries, particularly small and mid-sized ones. Witness the US Congress’ proposed US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act following Pretoria’s decision to institute proceedings against the State of Israel in the ICJ. The proposed bill accuses South African government members and ANC leaders of making anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements following the October 7 Hamas and calls for a broad reassessment of US relations with South Africa.
- Fear of economic reprisals. When Ireland’s government was considering recognising Palestinian statehood earlier this year, Israel’s ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich warned that doing so would send the wrong kind of message about Ireland as a tech hub and is worrying Israeli investors in the Irish IT services sector — a clear threat to tech services that account for the lion’s share of some $5 billion in annual trade between the countries. To its credit, Ireland, like Spain and Norway, stood firm against Israel’s barrage of threats and insults, and in late May become one of the first Western European nations to recognise Palestine.
- The risk of Israel suspending sales and support services for its high-tech weaponry. This is a point previously highlighted by Connor. A case in point is Colombia, one of the few countries to have severed close diplomatic ties with Israel. For decades Colombia has used Israeli cybersecurity systems, surveillance systems and other weapons products to fight drug cartels and rebel groups. But when the country’s President Gustavo Petro compared Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip to Nazi concentration camps in October, Israel immediately announced that it was ceasing military trade with Colombia. Months later, Petro hit back by suspending all arms purchases from Israel.
- The threat of Israeli retaliation against ministers or even leaders of governments who fall out of line on Gaza and other issues. Israel, through its UK-based proxies, already played a leading role in the downfall of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. According to a 2023 report by the Council for Foreign Relations, Israeli leaders have “allegedly” used Pegasus as a “diplomatic bargaining chip in pursuit of various foreign policy objectives.” Could they also be using the information garnered from Pegasus and other homegrown spyware programs as leverage over foreign leaders?
It’s perfectly possible. In late May, we learnt from The Guardian and two Israeli-based magazines, +972 and Local Call, that Israel had deployed its intelligence agencies to “surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries. Israeli intelligence captured the communications of numerous ICC officials, including (chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, Karim) Khan and his predecessor as prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, intercepting phone calls, messages, emails and documents.”
A Clear Left/Right Divide on Israel in Latin America
Of the ten countries that have officially joined South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel, five are Latin American. All of them — Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Bolivia — are governed by left-leaning governments. As Ben Norton notes, while left-wing governments in Latin America support the Palestinian struggle for freedom, national liberation, and sovereignty, the right-wing governments of the region are largely allied with the US and Israel:
This is especially the case for Argentina’s self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” President Javier Milei. The first foreign trip he took after coming to power was to Israel, where Milei expressed full support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist regime.
The far-right Argentine leader claimed that “Israel is not committing a single excess” in Gaza.
In the case of many of the left-wing governments in the region, history will have no doubt shaped their stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In Nicaragua, for example, Israel played a leading part in the Iran-Contra affair, supplying the Contras militias with many of their weapons. In fact, as Al Jazeera reported in its 2003 article, “Israel’s Latin American Trail of Terror“, Israel’s military ties with right-wing paramilitary groups and regimes span the length and breadth of Latin America, “starting just a few years after the Israeli state came into existence”:
Since then, the list of countries Israel has supplied, trained and advised includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.
But it isn’t only the sales of planes, guns and weapons system deals that characterises the Israeli presence in Latin America.
Where Israel has excelled is in advising, training and running intelligence and counter-insurgency operations in the Latin American “dirty war” civil conflicts of Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and now Colombia.
In the case of the Salvadoran conflict – a civil war between the right-wing landowning class supported by a particularly violent military pitted against left-wing popular organisations – the Israelis were present from the beginning. Besides arms sales, they helped train ANSESAL, the secret police who were later to form the framework of the infamous death squads that would kill tens of thousands of mostly civilian activists.
It’s a similar story in Colombia, as we’ve covered here before. Rafi Eitan, a former Mossad chief who came to fame for leading the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann, was hired by the Colombian President Virgilio Barco (1986-90) to help end the guerrilla conflict in the country. Eitan’s role in Colombia’s civil war was kept secret for 36 years, for obvious reasons: one of his recommendations, which was enthusiastically embraced by Barco, was to exterminate the political leaders of the Patriotic Union (UP), the left-wing party that emerged from a peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla.
In the brutal years-long assassination campaign that followed, 3,122 members of UP were killed, including two presidential candidates, five sitting congressmen, 11 deputies, 109 councilors, several former councilors, 8 current mayors, 8 former mayors and thousands of other activists. According to data presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the total number of victims is more than 6,000, including murders, disappearances, torture, forced displacements and other human rights violations.
Israel’s influence no doubt remains strong in Colombian military circles despite the Petro government’s severance of diplomatic ties in May. A year ago, the Mexican-Lebanese geopolitical analyst Alfredo Jalife warned Petro to “be careful!” The Israelis, he said, “could organise a coup against him. They control Colombia’s spyware and train its soldiers and paramilitaries…”. So, too, of course, could the US. But Petro went ahead and cut ties with Israel anyway. Countries, he said, cannot stay passive in the face of what is happening in Gaza.
