While the German press celebrated the October release of hostages held by Hamas, the truly damning questions were left largely to alternative media: Why were so many captives—dead or alive, up to the final moment—German nationals? And why did Germany prove so spectacularly impotent in securing their freedom?
Four freed hostages—Alon Ohel, Rom Braslavski, and brothers Gali and Ziv Bergman—held German citizenship. Three others whose remains families awaited were also German: Itay Chen, Tamir Nimrodi, and Tamir Ada.
The joy of release couldn’t mask a humiliating reality: Germany became the only Western nation whose citizens remained captive more than two years after October 7th.
“In the historical examination of the German-Israeli hostages, the German government, and above all Chancellor Friedrich Merz, failed miserably,” writes Julian Reichelt in Nius. He’s absolutely right.
Hamas targeted citizens from over 40 countries on October 7th, killing at least 43 Americans, 43 French, 14 British, and 10 Germans—the latter including Shiri Bibas and her two small sons. Yet in a bitter irony, Germany—whose politicians endlessly promise to “protect Jewish life” in Sunday speeches—proved tragically incapable of pressuring Hamas to release its citizens.
This wasn’t fate or numbers. It was choice.
From the start, humiliating pusillanimity characterized Germany’s approach to its Israeli-German citizens. The government presented its appeasement as superior to American tactics, backed by the mainstream media. When Trump posted “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!” Der Spiegel dismissed it as a “martial threat” that risked “interfering in negotiations.”
Now that Israel’s relentless military campaign and Trump’s intervention brought the last survivors home, that “reasoning” has evaporated. Germany stands exposed and humiliated by a terrorist organization—entirely due to political choices.
The silence speaks volumes
There was no poster campaign keeping hostages’ names and faces in public view—surprising given the abundance of public money for other campaigns, as journalist Ingo Way noted in Cicero. (One such campaign incidentally being the ever-ongoing effort against ‘hate,’ aka free speech).
Nor was there an official ceremony for those murdered by Hamas, as France at least held. The calculation was transparent: avoid alienating pro-Palestine constituencies—Islamists and Germany’s cultural Left.
For hostages and families, this cowardice compounded their despair.
On October 14th, 2023, Ricarda Louk appealed to German authorities for help finding her daughter Shani, 22, abducted from the Nova festival. Video showed Shani—clearly injured, face-down on a pickup truck—driven through Gaza streets as crowds spat on her. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s visit offered nothing but empty phrases.
It worsened. In August, parents of 19-year-old IDF soldier Itay Chen—now confirmed killed—wrote a scathing letter to Chancellor Merz after he announced partial suspension of weapons to Israel. This measure was hypocritically framed as protecting hostages, though it was transparent capitulation to Germany’s pro-Palestinian lobby. Itay’s parents cut through the dishonesty: “We cannot see how this measure would contribute to the release of Itay and the other six German hostages.”
Hamas learned its lesson: German citizens could be killed, captured, and tortured without serious reprisal.
The nadir came with images of emaciated Rom Braslavski in Hamas tunnels in August, begging and crying for his life (just as some self-important celebrities had sent a letter to Merz, demanding an arms embargo against Israel). Germany had capitulated without attempting to fight.
What your passport really means
This cowardice isn’t just a problem for Hamas victims. It should concern us all as German citizens. The message being sent: a German passport—and German citizenship—is losing its value as something worth defending.
“Civis Romanus sum“—I am a Roman citizen—granted significant protections in ancient Rome, including exemption from degrading punishments without trial. It embodied the state’s obligation to protect its citizens wherever they were, a right St. Paul, incidentally, invoked repeatedly.
For Germans, “Civis Germanus sum” is being steadily emptied of meaning. The Israeli-German victims surely asked themselves: What purpose does our German passport serve if the German state won’t credibly fight for our lives?
A passport once signified belonging to a community with shared values and solidarity. Citizens were expected to feel outrage when members became victims of racist murder. This solidarity has been hollowed out—even derided as backward.
Citizenship void of meaning
Meanwhile, the ease of obtaining German citizenship has increased significantly. In 2023 alone, over 75,000 Syrians received German citizenship, many through the government’s “turbo naturalization” option requiring just three years’ residence. Though the new government abolished this unpopular program—a clear majority of Germans rejected it for good reasons—naturalizations continue surging, reaching an all-time high of 292,000 in 2024, with Syrians again the largest group (and, incidentally, also the group known for including an above-average number of antisemites).
The criticism should not be about naturalization as such—every society has the right to welcome new members. The criticism centers on a purely managerial attitude toward citizenship, devoid of deeper meaning and diluted further through the concept of multiculturalism, which demands very little, if any, integration from newcomers—let alone a sense of commitment and duty.
Media pundits and politicians have assisted in this “dumbing down” of citizenship in other ways too. It’s become fashionable to refer to the German passport as “the most powerful travel document in the world.” Der Spiegel jubilated in 2024 that Germany topped the Henley Passport Index: “With a German passport, citizens can travel to 194 countries and territories without advance visa applications.”
Perhaps some find convenient travel—including to Lebanon, Turkey, and Palestinian Territories visa-free—life’s greatest achievement. The rest of us should ask: Is this what our passport has been reduced to?
Presented primarily as an easy way to travel, it becomes something akin to a traveler’s cheque: a convenience, not a bond—reduced from a symbol of belonging and mutual protection to little more than a travel document.
The price we pay
The shameful abandonment of German-Israeli hostages represents one of the worst manifestations of this dangerous hollowing out.
Hamas understood what Germany’s government seems reluctant to acknowledge: a state unwilling to vigorously defend its citizens invites contempt. The terrorists gambled that Germany’s passport represented no real threat, no genuine commitment—and they were proven right.
Those who died or suffered in captivity paid the price. But now every German citizen must ask: What does German citizenship mean, and what are the bonds that should bind us together?
The question isn’t whether others are watching and learning from Germany’s weakness. They already are. The real question is whether Germans themselves will recognize what’s being lost before it’s too late.
The Worthless German Passport: What Hamas Taught Us About Citizenship
Ulrike Mai from Pixabay
You may also like
The Three P’s of Rural Racism: People, Pubs, and Pets
Culturally, self-flagellation has become a civic virtue; institutions once central to national life now frame their own founding stock as the problem to be solved.
Sovereignty by Slogan, Dependency by Contract
The EU cannot claim to be reducing dependency while reinforcing structural reliance on the very systems that underpin security, technology, and capital flows.
When the State Abandons Its People, Someone Must Say No
When politics becomes an exercise in compliance rather than representation, citizens inevitably disengage—or revolt.
While the German press celebrated the October release of hostages held by Hamas, the truly damning questions were left largely to alternative media: Why were so many captives—dead or alive, up to the final moment—German nationals? And why did Germany prove so spectacularly impotent in securing their freedom?
Four freed hostages—Alon Ohel, Rom Braslavski, and brothers Gali and Ziv Bergman—held German citizenship. Three others whose remains families awaited were also German: Itay Chen, Tamir Nimrodi, and Tamir Ada.
The joy of release couldn’t mask a humiliating reality: Germany became the only Western nation whose citizens remained captive more than two years after October 7th.
“In the historical examination of the German-Israeli hostages, the German government, and above all Chancellor Friedrich Merz, failed miserably,” writes Julian Reichelt in Nius. He’s absolutely right.
Hamas targeted citizens from over 40 countries on October 7th, killing at least 43 Americans, 43 French, 14 British, and 10 Germans—the latter including Shiri Bibas and her two small sons. Yet in a bitter irony, Germany—whose politicians endlessly promise to “protect Jewish life” in Sunday speeches—proved tragically incapable of pressuring Hamas to release its citizens.
This wasn’t fate or numbers. It was choice.
From the start, humiliating pusillanimity characterized Germany’s approach to its Israeli-German citizens. The government presented its appeasement as superior to American tactics, backed by the mainstream media. When Trump posted “RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!” Der Spiegel dismissed it as a “martial threat” that risked “interfering in negotiations.”
Now that Israel’s relentless military campaign and Trump’s intervention brought the last survivors home, that “reasoning” has evaporated. Germany stands exposed and humiliated by a terrorist organization—entirely due to political choices.
The silence speaks volumes
There was no poster campaign keeping hostages’ names and faces in public view—surprising given the abundance of public money for other campaigns, as journalist Ingo Way noted in Cicero. (One such campaign incidentally being the ever-ongoing effort against ‘hate,’ aka free speech).
Nor was there an official ceremony for those murdered by Hamas, as France at least held. The calculation was transparent: avoid alienating pro-Palestine constituencies—Islamists and Germany’s cultural Left.
For hostages and families, this cowardice compounded their despair.
On October 14th, 2023, Ricarda Louk appealed to German authorities for help finding her daughter Shani, 22, abducted from the Nova festival. Video showed Shani—clearly injured, face-down on a pickup truck—driven through Gaza streets as crowds spat on her. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s visit offered nothing but empty phrases.
It worsened. In August, parents of 19-year-old IDF soldier Itay Chen—now confirmed killed—wrote a scathing letter to Chancellor Merz after he announced partial suspension of weapons to Israel. This measure was hypocritically framed as protecting hostages, though it was transparent capitulation to Germany’s pro-Palestinian lobby. Itay’s parents cut through the dishonesty: “We cannot see how this measure would contribute to the release of Itay and the other six German hostages.”
Hamas learned its lesson: German citizens could be killed, captured, and tortured without serious reprisal.
The nadir came with images of emaciated Rom Braslavski in Hamas tunnels in August, begging and crying for his life (just as some self-important celebrities had sent a letter to Merz, demanding an arms embargo against Israel). Germany had capitulated without attempting to fight.
What your passport really means
This cowardice isn’t just a problem for Hamas victims. It should concern us all as German citizens. The message being sent: a German passport—and German citizenship—is losing its value as something worth defending.
“Civis Romanus sum“—I am a Roman citizen—granted significant protections in ancient Rome, including exemption from degrading punishments without trial. It embodied the state’s obligation to protect its citizens wherever they were, a right St. Paul, incidentally, invoked repeatedly.
For Germans, “Civis Germanus sum” is being steadily emptied of meaning. The Israeli-German victims surely asked themselves: What purpose does our German passport serve if the German state won’t credibly fight for our lives?
A passport once signified belonging to a community with shared values and solidarity. Citizens were expected to feel outrage when members became victims of racist murder. This solidarity has been hollowed out—even derided as backward.
Citizenship void of meaning
Meanwhile, the ease of obtaining German citizenship has increased significantly. In 2023 alone, over 75,000 Syrians received German citizenship, many through the government’s “turbo naturalization” option requiring just three years’ residence. Though the new government abolished this unpopular program—a clear majority of Germans rejected it for good reasons—naturalizations continue surging, reaching an all-time high of 292,000 in 2024, with Syrians again the largest group (and, incidentally, also the group known for including an above-average number of antisemites).
The criticism should not be about naturalization as such—every society has the right to welcome new members. The criticism centers on a purely managerial attitude toward citizenship, devoid of deeper meaning and diluted further through the concept of multiculturalism, which demands very little, if any, integration from newcomers—let alone a sense of commitment and duty.
Media pundits and politicians have assisted in this “dumbing down” of citizenship in other ways too. It’s become fashionable to refer to the German passport as “the most powerful travel document in the world.” Der Spiegel jubilated in 2024 that Germany topped the Henley Passport Index: “With a German passport, citizens can travel to 194 countries and territories without advance visa applications.”
Perhaps some find convenient travel—including to Lebanon, Turkey, and Palestinian Territories visa-free—life’s greatest achievement. The rest of us should ask: Is this what our passport has been reduced to?
Presented primarily as an easy way to travel, it becomes something akin to a traveler’s cheque: a convenience, not a bond—reduced from a symbol of belonging and mutual protection to little more than a travel document.
The price we pay
The shameful abandonment of German-Israeli hostages represents one of the worst manifestations of this dangerous hollowing out.
Hamas understood what Germany’s government seems reluctant to acknowledge: a state unwilling to vigorously defend its citizens invites contempt. The terrorists gambled that Germany’s passport represented no real threat, no genuine commitment—and they were proven right.
Those who died or suffered in captivity paid the price. But now every German citizen must ask: What does German citizenship mean, and what are the bonds that should bind us together?
The question isn’t whether others are watching and learning from Germany’s weakness. They already are. The real question is whether Germans themselves will recognize what’s being lost before it’s too late.
Our community starts with you
READ NEXT
Is France Protecting Quentin’s Killers?
NATO 3.0: America’s Bold Reset
Did the Algorithm Shift Users to the Right? The Flimsy Case Against X