Recommendations of the Editorial team
On Easter Sunday in 2000, 21 people were abducted by the Islamist Abu Sayyaf from the Malaysian island of Sipadan. Among those kidnapped: the Wallerts from Göttingen.
In the summer of 2000 there was hardly any other topic in the media. BILD regularly cleared page 1 for “our Wallerts,” and a counter on TV counted the days since the kidnapping began. Media representatives visited the prisoners in their tropical camp in agreement (including financial) with the Islamists. Sounds like a jungle camp, but it was extremely serious.
Members of the federal government personally accompanied the release. In Göttingen, an official reception took place in the town hall. Shortly afterwards, a “Johannes B. Kerner Show Special” with the Wallert family was broadcast.
In Germany in the year 2000, no one could get past the Wallerts.
The problem with the hyphen
In October 2025, at the end of another kidnapping, things were completely different. The names of those affected are hardly known to anyone in the country. They are: Ziv and Gali Berman, Alon Ohel, Rom Braslavski, Tamir Nimrodi, Itay Chen and Tamir Adar. They are some of the last of the original number of more than 200 hostages that the Islamist Hamas kidnapped to Gaza on October 7, 2023.
When their captivity recently ended, the Nimrodi, Chen and Adar families were only able to receive the bodies of their loved ones. Ohel, Braslavski and the Berman brothers returned scarred in body and soul, but alive.
All of them, the survivors as well as the dead, were and are German. But in Germany in 2025, hardly anyone takes any notice of it.
The German Hamas hostages trigger the same emotions in Germany as the Wallerts’ 18 international prisoners: none. We feel for the Wallerts, but not the Chens. Because even though the Chens are German and Itay’s grandma was driven out of Bad Reichenhall by the Nazis, they still have the problem with the hyphen: They are German-Israelis. We Germans without an addition, we don’t know the hyphen. And what the farmer doesn’t know, he doesn’t feel.
One-two into disinterest
The scars of excessive political debates become visible in the sterile treatment of the hostages. From “The Federal Republic is not a country of immigration” (Kohl I government, 1982) to the first legal right to naturalization (1993), the possibility of a double passport (1999) and the later abolition of the option requirement, Germany has legally said goodbye to blood law after a laborious struggle.
But the whispers from all these years have seeped deep into our heads. It was about supposedly “unclear loyalties” and a “sale” of the German passport. Elsewhere it was said that people with dual passports were “between two countries” – meaning they didn’t belong anywhere. Right or not – emotionally, the one-two in Germany was contaminated with rhetorical manure.
But now those responsible are complaining about the smell! In the conservative “Cicero” Ingo Way recently attested to “German disinterest” with regard to the German Hamas hostages and asked pointedly but legitimately whether the men were “not German enough” for our country. We would like to recommend that Mr. Way ask Hugo Müller-Vogg, for example. Three years ago he also wrote in “Cicero” that dual nationals “didn’t want to commit” and “cherry-picked”. He compared second passports with second cars, spoke of “passport Germans” and “50% Germans”. Such widespread polemics did not bother anyone in large parts of the conservative public, as long as “Syrian” or “Turkish” was on the other side of the hyphen.
The bitter conclusion after years of contempt: Given the disinterest of a majority society that only has one passport, all double passports are the same. And those who suffer from this are always our compatriots. Whether we feel it or not.