“Candy through the gate” while greeting the jailer

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You slip sweets through the metal gate to a little girl who is being starved and confined, telling her you empathise—and telling onlookers it’s all you can do.

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Then you turn to shake the captor’s hand as he insists she is “fed well”, accepting that she is merely being punished for refusing to renounce her other caretaker—albeit with a punishment that is clearly overboard.

That is what Singapore’s posture on Gaza looks like today.

Senior Minister of State (Defence and Sustainability) Zaqy Mohamad posted from Amman about the SAF joining a 12-nation coalition to airdrop food and medical supplies with the Jordanian Air Force.

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The post praises our servicemen and women, stresses professionalism and compassion, and frames the operation as proof that Singapore is doing its part. I do not doubt the sincerity or skill of our aircrew. But airdrops are the sweets through the gate, not the key to the lock.

At home, former President Halimah Yacob has spoken with moral clarity about the atrocities unfolding in Gaza and the need to stand firmly with international law.

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That clarity jars with the self-congratulation around airdrops that humanitarian agencies have long described as a dangerous, public-relations substitute for opening land routes. Airdrops scatter small parcels at great cost and risk; they cannot replace sustained, unfettered truck convoys delivering food, fuel and medicine at scale.

The world has not been ambiguous about what is happening.

On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice found a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts and enable life-saving aid.

Since then, the orders have been reinforced as conditions worsened. Leading rights groups have accused Israel of using starvation as a method of warfare.

UN agencies continue to warn of famine, noting that months of restricted access have driven civilians to run toward aid drops and convoys—only to be shot at or crushed in the chaos. This is not a natural disaster. It is the predictable result of man-made obstruction.

Even on days when Israeli authorities claim roughly 300 aid trucks are entering, the UN says Gaza needs about 600 trucks every day just to stabilise the situation.

More than 100 humanitarian groups now warn that aid itself is being weaponised: since March, new rules have conditioned access on political vetting of organisations and staff, threatened deregistration for “delegitimising” Israel, and denied dozens of requests—leaving major NGOs unable to move a single truck while tonnes of food and medical supplies sit blocked just kilometres away.

As bombardment continues and civilians are pushed toward militarised distribution points that agencies describe as a “death trap”, hospitals run out of basics and children, the elderly, and people with disabilities die from hunger and preventable illness.

Which is why celebrating airdrops without naming the cause of the hunger is moral evasion.

Relief groups have said repeatedly that airdrops are inefficient, dangerous and, at times, counterproductive. One truck can carry roughly what dozens of parachutes can; trucks and open crossings are what save lives, not the occasional dramatic video of bundles drifting from the sky.

Singapore’s standard refrain is that we are a small country and cannot do much. But in 2022 we proved the opposite when we imposed unilateral sanctions on Russia over Ukraine—without waiting for a UN mandate—because it was the right thing to do.

We did not send troops; we used the tools of finance, export controls and political signalling to raise the costs of wrongdoing. Those tools still exist. If we truly believe in a rules-based order, we should be prepared to use them again.

Gratitude isn’t a blank cheque. Singaporeans often say Israel stood by us in our early years and helped jump-start our national defence.

We can acknowledge that debt without surrendering our moral compass. Gratitude does not oblige us to close a blind eye to alleged genocide, mass starvation and the forced displacement of civilians—nor to the killing of people as they rush desperate and unarmed toward food after months of deprivation.

True friendship doesn’t mean silence in the face of atrocity; it means insisting on international law, accountability, and unimpeded land access for life-saving aid.

Trade ties are not a moral alibi. Israel’s embassy in Singapore touts our “shared values”, cultural festivals, and a flourishing commercial relationship—highlighting that total bilateral trade reached about US$3.8 billion in 2022 and that Singapore is a regional hub for Israeli business.

Fine. Commerce and culture can be bridges; they are also leverage. When those ties are paraded as symbols of “global solidarity”, they should sharpen, not blunt, our willingness to act when that partner is accused of starvation as policy and faces genocide allegations before the world court. Otherwise, “shared values” becomes a slogan to excuse looking away.

And the opacity around arms makes it worse. In Parliament, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s Foreign Minister declined to confirm whether Singapore would suspend arms sales to Israel where there are reasonable grounds to suspect misuse in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, citing a policy of not disclosing defence sales for national-security reasons.

He noted there is no embargo and said Singapore must “weigh all considerations carefully”.

That is precisely the problem: when famine is manufactured and civilians are gunned down as they lunge for food, the foremost consideration should be preventing complicity. Strategic silence is a choice—with moral consequences.

Back home, Singaporeans across race and religion are angry and heartsick at Gaza’s suffering. They want firmer action. Yet the stock response is to “file Parliamentary Questions”.

PQs can surface facts, but in a famine they read like performance without policy: while borders stay shut and aid is rationed, questions that merely “seek updates” do little for starving families.

Meanwhile, some PAP MPs say Palestinians must first work toward a two-state solution—even as they face relentless bombing, starvation, and displacement. And they overlook that it is Israel’s leadership that has rejected a viable two-state path: in 2024 the Knesset voted against Palestinian statehood; the prime minister has repeatedly said there will be no sovereign Palestinian state and that Israel will retain security control over all territory west of the Jordan; and senior ministers have openly advocated the “voluntary emigration” of Gazans.

On the ground, UN agencies say roughly 90% of Gaza’s 2.1 million people have been displaced, while major rights groups now describe starvation as policy. Taken together, this does not read like a government seeking peace; it reads like a project to empty a territory.

MFA’s statement of 24 July says Hamas must release all remaining hostages immediately and unconditionally—as if that is the primary impediment to relief. But look at the scale of destruction.

In the first six weeks after 7 October 2023, Israel dropped more than 22,000 bombs on Gaza, and an estimated 40–45% of the air-to-ground munitions used were unguided—predictably maximising civilian harm.

By 7 October 2024, Israel said it had struck over 40,000 targets. By 7 May 2025, about 70% of all structures in Gaza were damaged or destroyed. In that context, the claim that hostages’ safety is paramount is not credible: you do not pulverise the place where your own people are held if your priority is bringing them home alive.

Reporting by Israel’s Channel 13 further indicates that the prime minister rejected a proposal that could have freed all hostages and paused the war.

That choice, alongside allegations that some Israelis killed on 7 October died under the IDF’s own “Hannibal” directive, underscores a grim reality: this war reads less like defence or proportionate reprisal, and more like an effort to remove Gaza’s inhabitants—an outcome long championed by maximalist voices within Israel.

Recognising these realities means policy, not performance: impose export controls, tighten financial due diligence, and back unrestricted land access.

In short, if we truly want to do more than slip sweets through the gate, here’s what “doing more” looks like:

  • Publicly and explicitly back the ICJ’s orders and call for compliance, linking any high-level engagement to verifiable improvements in humanitarian access on land.
  • Apply targeted financial and trade measures: restrict dual-use exports; scrutinise dealings with entities implicated in settlement enterprise or blockade logistics; and tighten due diligence by Singapore-based banks.
  • Suspend the feel-good optics that sanitise the situation. Align official messaging with the moral clarity already articulated by Halimah Yacob: condemn starvation as a weapon of war, demand accountability, and demand access.
  • Use our convening power—small though it may be—to build a coalition of states in our region willing to push for corridors and ceasefires that are actually respected, rather than episodic pauses that reset the clock to more siege.
  • Adopt and publish a strict human-rights due-diligence policy for arms and dual-use exports, with immediate suspension of licences to entities credibly linked to violations, and report aggregate export data by category to ensure accountability.

None of this denigrates the professionalism of SAF personnel. It simply recognises that the crisis in Gaza is not a logistics puzzle but a political choice enforced at gunpoint.

When politicians celebrate airdrops while avoiding meaningful pressure on the authority imposing the siege, Singapore reduces itself to the neighbour slipping candy through the gate and patting ourselves on the back for a “job well done”.

In a moment when rights groups describe starvation as policy and the world court has warned of a genocidal risk, moral adults do not settle for optics. They reach for every lever they have—and pull hard.

The post “Candy through the gate” while greeting the jailer appeared first on The Online Citizen.



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