Where exactly, is your love? 

Many people seem to be losing a considerable amount of sleep over the Israel/Gaza war, and expecting me to write something here, choosing my side too.

As a Christian, of course I biblically understand Israel’s going after the Hamas, wherever they may be hiding, yet as a human being, I have been left shell-shocked by the level of carnage on both sides.

Innocent 1,400 people massacred in their homes, parks and streets in an unprovoked attack on Israel by Hamas and on the other hand, the retaliation that has left at least 7,000 Palestinians dead.

I don’t think all 7,000 are Hamas terrorists; so, Lord have mercy on us all. What I find more baffling, however, is our preoccupation with what happens beyond Africa, even as untold suffering continues in DR Congo, Sudan, Somalia, etc.

Before Israel/Hamas, it was the unfairness of the Russia/Ukraine war…I have seen African heads of government come out categorically to pick a side in these wars, and others have sent generous aid packages to those war-ravaged countries, with their good Samaritan consignments flying right over immense misery in their African backyards.

In fact, in some cases, it is the very countries rushing to stop the misery in Ukraine, Gaza and beyond, causing part of the suffering to their neighbours. Sigh! It is not bad for us to sympathise and empathise with Israel, Gaza, Russia or Ukraine, but may I take this opportunity to remind you that the bloodshed has never stopped right here at home?

What is genetically wrong with us? The other week, two foreign tourists and their Ugandan guide were gunned down in Kasese near Queen Elizabeth national park, and within days, I was reading about a cabinet resolution to dedicate a road to the slain tourists’ memories… As if the Ugandan guide who was with them died ‘a little less’.

Also, where is the monument in honour of Jimmy Ssekasi and his nine students gunned down by LRA rebels in Murchison Falls national park in the 1990s? Where is the monument in memory of the school-going children massacred by ADF rebels in Kasese just months ago?

Or the dozens that died during the bomb attacks on football fans watching the 2010 World Cup final? Maybe that is why Ugandans are called ‘the most hospitable people in the world’ by visitors to our country; we naturally tend to love visitors and everybody else more than we love ourselves and our own.

A plus for any tourist destination, but definitely a worrying factor when it comes to what it truly says about us as a people. Even the Bible says in 1 John 4:20, “If any-one says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen”. For the innocent lives lost in this world’s many senseless wars, may their souls rest in peace and may God heal this planet.

malita@observer.ug