Europe’s multi-layered hypocrisy on refugees

„More layers of hypocrisy: Although the photographs are indeed terrible, they aren’t actually telling us anything new. Refugees have been crossing the Mediterranean for months. Hundreds have died. Also, if we are disturbed by a dead child on a beach, why aren’t we disturbed by another dead child in a bombed-out house in Aleppo, Syria? What’s the distinction? (...)

It gets worse: The law says refugees should “declare themselves in the first European Union country they enter” and then apply for asylum according to E.U. law. That’s all very well for, say, Ireland. But what happens when tens of thousands of people board boats in Tripoli and start heading for Italy or Greece? Now we know: Those two countries have been pleading for assistance from their neighbors for many months, to no avail. And when Hungary can’t cope with the numbers? We’ve just learned: The refugees become a prop for Viktor Orban , the Hungarian prime minister, who has a fondness for dramatic scenes.

Orban was correct in one of his inflammatory statements: The refugees don’t want to stay in Hungary. They want to go to Germany, mostly because the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has made sympathetic noises, has offered to take more Syrians and has called on others to do the same. The Hungarians, by contrast, have greeted refugees with pepper spray and made them camp out at the Budapest train station (For history buffs, another irony: At one point, refugees started chanting »Germany, Germany!«)”