People who aren't sympathetic to the desperation of the refugees' plight must not understand what they're leaving behind. These are people who have been living in a monumentally high risk situation for years. They have been forced to take chances to survive and they believe - rather heartbreakingly - that Europeans are humane people who will want to help them.
Many of the evils of the Syrian situation are still present in the refugee camps in countries bordering Syria. Death isn't as sudden but it still permeates everything.
Our own prime minister came and sat in their tents, where many children are slowly dying from malnutrition, poor sanitation and lack of medication, and told them he would help them. Is it any wonder they think he wouldn't turn them away? If you've been living in a makeshift tent for years, effectively forced to put your life on hold for an indefinite period of time without any hope of things improving, wouldn't you feel inclined to throw yourself on a kind man's mercy? If my children were starving, I would look for another mother and then plead.
If I was watching my child's health decline because she was always cold, always dehydrated and never able to get well, I would consider myself in a new crisis. If I was watching my children growing into young adults without any prospect of getting an education or ever living in a country were they could earn a living, I'd consider their plight desperate. Yes, I'd be grateful there were no bombs falling on my head and I'd be glad that my husband and sons were not at risk of being arrested and tortured or killed. I would still be very concerned that we would not all be able to live - or if we lived, that it would be exactly the same as living in a prison with no hope of ever getting out. If I had daughters, it would be worse. I would agonise over having them make a 'good' marriage so I could feed their siblings and disabled relatives. I would worry every time they stepped out of the tent that they were not safe, knowing my brothers would kill them if they had the misfortune to be raped.
In Syria, they have endured the horrors of the blitz and a concentration camp combined. Whole families starving to death, unable to access water, food or medical care. Dehydrated and plagued with illness because there is no sanitation. Living from bomb to bomb. Seeing family members disappear, sometimes as young as five, sometimes the wage earner. Hearing later that they were tortured to death. Children knifed to death as a punishment to their parents. Girls living in fear of being raped. Escaping to safety, only to realise it's a new kind of death.
If I was in this position, I would take my children and walk until we reached a place where they could learn and where we could earn money to buy food, especially if I believed that such a place existed and was full of decent human beings. I do not really believe anyone who says they wouldn't.