On the English-language Deutsche Welle TV station, they showed a long programme on Saturday evening showing how Germany is welcoming the Syrian migrants.

Now DW is sponsored by German State money so it stood to reason it portrayed the welcome that is being given to the migrants across Germany.

You had German technology and timekeeping at their best. Verdant meadows, silent and gleaming trains, the works.

The welcome that the migrants are receiving from Germans of all ages was highlighted: they opened up a centre that has been receiving people in need of asylum through the years and every migrant was allocated a room with super clean bedding and abundant food.

No time was lost. School for the children started the next day and the adults began attending classes to learn German.

So far, so good.

But when the programme interviewed some of the migrants, one of them, a swarthy middle-aged man, told how he had been brought by a ship that rescued him and his companions from a leaking boat, to Malta.

This man expressed himself in very strong terms against the kind of welcome the migrants got in Malta.

He may have used terms wrongly, as when he said they were thrown into a prison (for a closed centre) but he added they were beaten up by the soldiers and some of them even tried suicide.

Now remember this was being said when most of the Syrians expressed themselves in similar terms about Hungary and its soldiers. In German and indeed European eyes, Hungary has become the country no one wants to know about, the country which would keep migrants out and which did not bother if the migrants were people in need of help.

Now according to this man, aired on the German TV, Malta is almost as bad as Hungary.

Maybe the details he gave are wrong, and most probably they are so.

But it is a fact that there is a world of difference between the open-hearted welcome being given by Germany and the grudging welcome given over the years by Malta.

Germany invited them in; we got lumped with them if they landed here. Our laws are what they are, whereas Germany does not close them in. There are no restrictions on where they can and cannot go.

Obviously, being a small country, we cannot take in the numbers that have come here. But since we cannot send them back, we take them in with as bad an attitude as we can muster.

The Germans understand the migrants have suffered so much over the past months and years and try to help. They even donated clothes, toys and things which the migrants could choose and take.

Perhaps more fundamentally, the Germans, sticklers for rules and order, did not put in the soldiers and/or the police to handle the migrants. Here, we penned them in centres that only lately, after much protests internationally, have been rendered somewhat habitable.

Maybe at that time we did not know any better. Now we know, for Germany has shamed us.

To think about it, we have allowed a xenophobic trait to become national so that people are ashamed to show mercy and altruism to migrants escaping from war.

Over our social media the presence of Isis in Libya is taken to mean that soon enough Isis will be here. People are made to fear that terrorists can come in under the guise of migrants and then start killing.

An episode such as that which took place early yesterday can inflame people to such an extent that some will not see one episode to be just that: one episode.

Imagine if Germany had chosen to be xenophobic as much as Hungary is. Imagine if any episode involving an Arab running amok is blown out of all proportion to mark the beginning of The Clash of Civilisations. Imagine if Merkel had chosen to follow Pegida instead of the dictates of humanity.

And even if all that happened, and all Europe were to be inflamed by racial or religious hatred, Malta’s past, its history, its civilization, its religion should surely act as a buffer and mitigate xenophobia and put the Maltese in the footsteps of their ancestors who welcomed a Syrian-Jew called Saul whose vessel foundered on the Maltese rocks.

No one ever said that being merciful carries any guarantee against being attacked. That would be a price, a risk, one takes as one follows the higher dictates of humanity despite threats and dangers.