Jet lag is a killer. I've been waking up at weird hours and hitting my "second wind" around midnight all week, since I arrived home from Greece this past Sunday. The 7 hour time difference has been hitting me hard, and my mind's been racing with images of Corinthian columns and palm trees since I returned.

Do you know what else is a killer?

ISIS. Or, as my friends Tamar and Zaki call them, DAISH.

Since the beginning of DAISH's reign of terror, the Turkish-Grecian border has been inundated with thousands fleeing the genocide, and Greece has borne the brunt of the weight of thousands in transit, on their way to Germany or abroad. Although by no means is Greece's economy or border situation secure, they currently offer temporary asylum to 50,000 as of the time of my visit over the last three weeks, and more are positioned to come every day. Greece's economy, prior to their economic crash as well as the rise of DAISH, was ranked lower than Syria in terms of the stability of their economy. Greece is not particularly wealthy, and Syria was not particularly undeveloped. Yet still they have willingly opened their doors to these people, and so I was given the opportunity on two occasions to visit one of the many camps outside of Athens.

Amnesty International reports that 4.5 million have fled, and are currently in Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq, who have opened their doors willingly to aid them. Germany has also offered to allow just under 40,000 to resettle within their borders. Those who make it as far as Greece, hopefully on their way to Germany, Sweden, or one of the other resettlement locations, have often paid 8000 US dollars per member of their traveling party (including infants), and have faced harassment from law enforcement and threats of being sent back into the clutches of DAISH throughout their journey.

Very few speak English. One old man spoke German, and the professor who was leading our trip did much of his post-graduate work in Germany, and was able to translate most of what he said to us. The elderly man, who had a P.h.D and had been fairly well off in his life in Syria, regaled us with stories of how 300 children had been beheaded in the next village, and that any woman with her head uncovered was taken with them. He recounted President Assad's collaboration with the DAISH militants, robbing his people under the guise of attempting to "fight ISIS." Imagine (for the college students) the head of the department of the University that most directly affects you, the person who you hope will one day sign off on your degree. Now imagine every other professor and student you've interacted with. Pick three of them you tangentially know, and imagine every other one of them, as well as your University, is dead.

That was the story this old man told. In my conversations with what English speakers we could find, this narrative was apparent. The wealthiest of Syria escaped by selling everything that DAISH had not yet destroyed - and the middle-class, the poor, have all been slaughtered. DAISH's new recruits are those escaping the slaughter the only way they can - by joining in, and allowing themselves to be radicalized. Entire towns are slaughtered just to send a message - and on the ground, very little is being done, can be done, to help them.

I consider myself a pacifist. I'm not advocating ground troops in Syria, and I don't think more killing will solve the ideological and economically motivated slaughter that is currently driving these people out. I have seen the pregnant women living in cabins with families of 12 or 15, I have seen the children, used to private schools and English language education, now with only one set of clothing and kicking half-deflated soccer balls around the ruins of recreation centers in the nicest camps that have been offered to the refugees, and I have seen the "young males between 18-25" that I've heard so much about, parsing through the discarded, off-hand donations of XXL hockey jerseys that Westerners give them, and trying to find clothing that won't make them look too foolish, because maybe one has his eye on a girl he'd like to marry, and another is ashamed of his poverty.

Here's what I do know: Jet lag kills. DAISH is worse. But the worst killer? Are the complacent who sit by while 4.5 million languish in tent-cities like Lesvos, in encampments in Lebanon, and try to find cover in Turkey while radical insurgents bomb the place around them, and do nothing to help them. If we have not witnessed these people's plight, if we have not considered their need, and if we no do not open the doors to more than the paltry ~10,000 (with all of our tracts of open land, all of our financial resources, in the face of Greece's 50,000 in transit and Germany's 40,000 permanent residencies!), then I pray to God the history books do not remember DAISH as these people's killers, but the people who turned them over to their machetes.