Politics: Turning up the heat on Israel or diplomatic shadow play?

Last Friday, Jom reported that the Singapore government had offered “barely a whimper” to the latest round of devastation in Gaza. That has changed. The same day, Lawrence Wong, prime minister, said that “the restrictions imposed on the delivery of humanitarian supplies are completely unacceptable” and may be “a likely breach of international humanitarian law.” A day later, Faishal Ibrahim, acting minister-in-charge of Muslim affairs, said that he agreed with Ehud Olmert, former Israel prime minister, that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza. “It pains me to say this, considering Israel’s contributions to Singapore in our early years,” he said, alluding, intentionally or not, to the fact that 60 years is a long time, and positions can change when facts do. It’s curious that Faishal seemed to defer to the moral authority of a former Israeli prime minister, rather than expressing his own clear opinion or referencing the numerous international scholars and bodies, including the International Criminal Court, who’ve long said the same. 

Still, never before have Singaporean leaders condemned Israeli aggression against Palestinians to this extent. But is this a seminal shift, or simply the continuation of a decades-long shadow play? “Wayang was, perhaps, our original sin,” Jom had written last year. “And because of this it’s fair for all citizens to be a little sceptical about anything that Israeli or Singaporean leaders say publicly about our countries’s ties…While Singapore officially cultivates a close friendship with Israel, it purports to do the same with the Palestinians. In Israel-Asia Relations in the Twenty-First Century, a book published last year [2023], political analysts Kevjn Lim and Mattia Tomba cited sources close to the MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] who claimed that Singapore generally supports Palestinian resolutions at the UN ‘irrespective of what we may think of their merits, in order to give ourselves political cover to develop substantive relationships with Israel.’”

Are Faishal’s and Wong’s statements performative, to appease the growing lobby of Singaporeans, especially Malay Muslims, sympathetic to the Palestinian cause? Or is the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) actually getting closer to interrogating Singapore’s historical relationship with Israel, especially our military kinship? Recall, among many other things, this saw Israeli arms makers leveraging Gaza devastation at the Singapore Airshow last year to hawk weapons to regional autocrats. Whatever the case, now that the political space has widened, ordinary Singaporeans keen on change should keep up the democratic pressure that, since October 7th 2023, has seen our leaders repeatedly caught on the backfoot by shifting societal sentiments on the Israel-Palestine question.

International: Tanks, not trade

At last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual security powwow organised by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian president, made a surprise visit and scolded China for its apparent pro-Russia meddling. This year it was the turn of Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, who warned of an “imminent” threat from China, referencing the South China Sea and Taiwan. He urged Asian countries to raise their defence spending. “NATO members are pledging to spend five percent of their GDP on defense,” he said, referencing demands by Donald Trump, US president. “So it doesn’t make sense for countries in Europe to do that while key allies in Asia spend less on defense in the face of an even more formidable threat.” (Most South-east Asian countries spend under 1.5 percent; South Korea spends 2.6 percent; Singapore, an outlier, already spends about three percent of GDP on defence, more than it does on education.) 

Alan Chong of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) portrayed Hegseth’s comments as “provocative and often hostile language reminiscent of the interwar years”. For the first time since 2019, Beijing didn’t send a top defence official to the summit. But it subsequently criticised the US for using it to “create disputes, sow discord, provoke confrontation and seek selfish interests”. Kevin Chen, also from RSIS, argued that Hegseth seemed to be addressing a domestic audience rather than those present in Singapore, with his references to the “invasion of 21 million illegals” and other MAGA tropes. “The apparent gulf between what South-east Asian governments and Washington consider important, including a confrontational approach to China and dismissal of climate change, may hinder cooperation going forward.”

Perhaps most worryingly for South-east Asia’s trade-dependent countries, Hegseth declined to discuss Trump’s turbulent, troubling tariffs: “I’m happily in the business of tanks, not trade.” Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s prime minister, criticised “the onslaught of arbitrary imposition of trade restrictions”. He added: “What holds true for us holds true elsewhere— where trade flourishes, stability follows. When it falters, the consequences ripple far beyond any one region.” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, also stressed the importance of economic interdependence, and sought to position the bloc as a more reliable partner than the US for Asia. 

Chan Chun Sing, Singapore’s new defence minister, said that it was a “geostrategic reality” for South-east Asian states to engage with China, the US, and others. “If we have to choose sides, may we choose the side of principles—principles that uphold a global order, where we do not descend into the law of the jungle, where the mighty do what they wish and the weak suffer what they must.” And yet, as the 2003 Iraq war showed, Singapore will happily ignore the rules-based order to support a larger power against a smaller one when it’s expedient. As always, ordinary people are left to wonder, as we watch the theatricality of global diplomacy in five-star hotels, if the Masters of War mean what they’re saying, or even know what they’re doing.

Society: Are mules victims or perpetrators?

In episode six of “Scam Inc”, a new podcast series by The Economist, host Sue-Lin Wong interviews “Daniel”, a young Singaporean who spoke about becoming a money mule for scam syndicates in 2021 when he was 17. After secondary school, he had taken odd jobs, his favourite being a part-time dishwasher. (“Work long hours.” “Spray water on each other.” “Break plates.”) But the pay sucked. A former classmate asked Daniel if he was keen to earn more. All he had to do was open a bank account in his name, use a designated phone number on the account, and hand over his bank card once opened. For each account opened, he’d get S$800 in cash, about double his monthly salary. So he did. Soon, hundreds of thousands of dollars were flowing through his accounts. Stacks of bank statements with these ludicrous amounts showed up in his mailbox, which were seen by his mum. Within weeks, a bank locked one of his cards and froze the account, pending review. Daniel got out in time, but several of his friends ended up in jail.

This is the human dimension behind the 41 Singaporeans who were charged this week for allegedly acting as money mules, by allowing these syndicates to access their bank accounts or SingPass credentials. The youngest accused is 16, one of many youths ensnared. Presumably just like Daniel, they had aspirations for a better life in one of the world’s most unequal and expensive cities. 

That’s not to excuse the crime. As a “tiny piece of a much, much bigger ecosystem”, in Wong’s words, mules play an important, if unwitting, role in helping launder scam proceeds. (Perhaps even from the likes of Su Haijin and others in the Fujian gang.) The global online scams industry is now probably worth over US$500bn (S$686bn) a year, said The Economist, and “may already be as big a scourge as illegal drugs”. Scam victims in Singapore lost S$1.1bn last year, a record high. To fall prey to a scam can be devastating for victims and their families, with some pushed to suicide. 

Still, as the podcast makes clear, for most lower-level operatives, particularly those lured by the promise of a call-centre job but actually trafficked to work in scam factories, the line between being a victim and perpetrator is often hazy. So while firm action is needed against mules, it’s just as important for society to continually ask how we can temper inequality, raise the incomes of those at the bottom, and change their circumstance so that one can work as a dishwasher with a living wage and dignity.

Note: We have about 30 tickets left for our Jom Cakap event on June 24th at The Projector—The Economist’s Sue-Lin Wong in conversation with Jom’s Corrie Tan about “Scam Inc”. Get yours now.