And now they are blowing up Germans!

When western kids are frustrated, they tend to go on drugs or destroy themselves some other way. The past couple of weeks’ young killers in Germany seem to be of a different metal.

Having somehow survived the ordeal of getting to Europe, partly by sea, trekking through woods, crossing fences, evading border guards and paranoid police officers lurking at every turn of the road, with little or no money, being told everywhere, “we don’t want you here!” must have been almost like escaping from a Nazi concentration camp, the difference being that there is no “home” waiting for them if they make it through the barbed wire.

No “welcome!”, no celebration of their heroic survival awaits them. They have made the desperate journey only to find that they will be put on a plane back to their starting point, which for most of them is just another concentration camp, at least in practical terms.

Far from condoning their massacres, for which I blame the ISIS, regardless of whether ISIS actually orchestrated the acts, I cannot help understanding the power of their despair. Look at them! They are hardly more than kids. Until war blocked out the sun over Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, to all appearances for ever, these kids watched western TV series about happy families in pretty towns where “poverty” meant not owning the latest four-wheel-drive sedan. No wonder they were sure that with hard work, they would do well here.

How could they possibly understand what we think is obvious: If you have a passport from a Schengen country, fine, you may try your luck here. If not, tough luck, rules are rules, and we all have to follow the rules, don’t we. Next.

I know how much effort it cost us all, last winter, to dismiss thoughts of the thousands and thousands of refugees from the Middle East who had sold and/or left everything and who were shivering under a bush somewhere in the dark outskirts of the Schengen area.

Most of them do not kill! Those who do, still do not kill a fraction of all the people who get killed in traffic accidents. But the situation is indeed serious and tragic for us all.

I would like to add that the number of European victims of terrorism is only a infinitessimal fraction of Middle Eastern victims of terrorism. So if we feel traumatised, how do they feel?