Watch Angela Merkel destroy the asylum dreams of a crying Palestinian teenager — on TV

Angela Merkel's hard-nosed handling of Greek debt has led to accusations that she's merciless and unyielding — the euro zone's 'bad cop' who's got the stomach to get unpleasant things done. 

If the German prime minister was hoping to soften her reputation — not that she should be expected to, and the fact that she's earned this reputation at all says a lot about gender and politics — she didn't help herself on Wednesday, when she was filmed crushing the hopes and dreams of a teenage Palestinian asylum seeker.

It all went down in a school gymnasium in the German city of Rostock. Merkel was there speaking with a group of teenagers for a televised discussion titled "Good Life in Germany." That turned out to be a serious misnomer. 

One young girl, Reem, told Merkel that her family had settled in Germany four years earlier after leaving a Lebanese refugee camp. Reem's family are Palestinians, and despite having no state to return to, they're facing imminent deportation.

“As long as I don't know how long I can stay here, I don’t know what my future will be,” Reem said.

"I have goals like anyone else. I want to study like them. It’s very unpleasant to see how others can enjoy life, and I can’t myself.”

Merkel had bad news for her. 

"Politics is sometimes hard. You’re right in front of me now and you’re an extremely sympathetic person," Merkel explained. "But you also know in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are thousands and thousands and if we were to say you can all come … we just can’t manage it.”

Ouch. 

Reem started sobbing, understandably, and Merkel responded by awkwardly stroking her arm — a stroke heard round the world in the form of the mocking Twitter hashtag #MarkelStreichelt.

It's a bad look, but it's not totally fair to Merkel. Germany already takes in more refugees than other EU nations. And in the first half of 2015 it received as many asylum applications as it did in all of 2014 — around 180,000. Last year, Germany accepted 77, 109 of those applications. This year, the applications could reach 250,000. Merkel's government has doubled federal funding to states and municipalities to help them deal with the new arrivals.

It was one of those rare moments where a world leader was confronted with the human impact of their policies.