War, Novak Djokovic once observed, is the worst thing that can happen to anyone.

I sincerely hope he’s not destined to become a male Cassandra, bearing witness to the horror of the inevitable. But it certainly seems that way, doesn’t it?

In recent days, we’ve all been forced to bear witness to the kind of rage, terror and desperation that he no doubt experienced as a child of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s.

The former Yugoslavia at the 20th century’s sunset, New York at the 21st century’s dawn, Nigeria and Ukraine today, Israel and the Palestinian people eternally – the names change, the borders and media circus shift, but the stories are always sickeningly the same. Little boys mangled and murdered by mortar shells. Teenaged ones burned alive or kidnapped, never to return.

And now some 300 souls blown to smithereens on another ill-fated Malaysia Airlines plane, plucked out of the air as it were and scattered in pieces on the ground. And for what?