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South Africa has filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) alleging that Israel is engaging in "genocidal acts" in Gaza.

We have had cases where relatively low level people involved in "genocidal acts" have been prosecuted such as the case of the 98-year-old man who was an 18 year old guard at Sachsenhausen.

Arrest warrants have been requested for those at the top of the command structure. If we take the hypothetical that these people are found guilty of genocide, how far theoretically could legal responsibility go? Could those on the ground face international legal consequences for their actions? Would conscripts have any specific defence?

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    The examples you cite were prosecuted in Germany, for crimes committed while under German jurisdiction. They were not prosecuted by the ICJ (which doesn't prosecute individuals anyway). The likelihood of the South African case to succeed is very small, similarly any likelihood of any persecution against Israeli officials in the ICC (an entirely different entity). Filing populist complaints for political reasons is easy, proving guilt beyond any reasonable doubt is a much higher bar.
    – littleadv
    Commented May 26 at 4:46
  • Germany prosecutes the last living Nazi collaborators to clean up its history at least on paper. That has nothing to do with current events.
    – Trish
    Commented May 26 at 8:47

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Ever since a high court decision to classify many supporting actions at concentration and murder camps as accessory to murder, which has no statute of limitations, German courts are prosecuting former Nazi guards under domestic criminal laws. This does not reference war crimes.

As prosecuted, these accessory to murder charges go all the way down to the lowest involved individuals. The decision to take this to trial was made when many more, and more senior, individuals were dead, which could be blamed on Cold War politics.

There are other, more recent examples involving middling officials e.g. from Rwanda and Syria. A German national who was involved as a non-leader with the IS got sentenced for crimes against humanity, among other crimes under German law.

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  • Last paragraph: the judgement of the german court was for Mord, marked by the depravity of letting someone die of thirst while chained.
    – Trish
    Commented May 26 at 13:30
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    @Trish, This went from OLG to BGH and back. The BGH wrote Verbrechens gegen die Menschlichkeit durch Versklavung mit Todesfolge in Tateinheit mit weiteren Straftaten.
    – o.m.
    Commented May 26 at 15:25
  • in that document, section 13, lists all the various crimes, including § 211 StGB (murder), which is worth a special mention - the crimes against humanity came together with an accessory to murder charge, very much the same way that nazi crimes are prosecuted. VStGB is also a german law that is special in that it tries to implement most war crimes.
    – Trish
    Commented May 26 at 16:44

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