A country close to us in Europe has a terrific internal war going on. Italy is ravaged by killings, maimings, bombs, and riven by sectoral and political fighting. No end is in sight and most of its infrastructure is in tatters. The present is horrific, the near future bleaker, blacker.

That was the imagination gone loose. There is no war in Italy and all is fine. No need for us to worry.

Now look at reality—a bit further south from us in our paradise called Malta is Libya. It is mainly Muslim and it is inhabited not by Western people but by Arabs.

The situation I imagined is happening in Italy is in fact roughly the way things stand in Libya—people are dying, people are suffering, people are being denied their normal life.

And we in our fish-pond of a country talk mainly of the Maltese businesses that are suffering in Libya; the threat of migrants coming here in their boatloads; we talk of the threat of jihadists reaching our shores.

We worry about us—our daily bread which some intrepid Maltese businessmen are losing. We worry about everything that concerns us. But we hardly spare a thought for the dying, the afflicted, the ravaged.

But I can’t begin to imagine how we would be hearing all about the Italians and their plight, their suffering and their deaths if there was civil war in western, Christian Italy.