The ‘Special Relationship’ Between Singapore and Israel

It takes chutzpah – a fine Yiddish word – for the foreign minister of a far-away Asian nation to walk into another country’s war, as Singapore Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan did in Israel in mid-March: to officially convey to Israeli leaders that “Israel’s military response in Gaza has gone too far.” But, as the foreign ministry told reporters in Singapore last week, that visit took place and Balakrishnan did.

Singapore’s air force has crossed Asia to air-drop humanitarian aid for Palestinians and its foreign ministry has condemned and blocked an Israeli embassy claim that the Quran itself recognizes Jews’ ancient presence and rights in Israel/Palestine and not Palestinians’. Singapore’s reasons for taking these actions are compelling, but they come with huge irony: The country’s decades-long, semi-secret record of collaborating with Israel on several fronts has now been turned on its head.

(See related story: Singapore’s Activist Role over Gaza)

Singapore’s reasons for taking these actions are compelling, but they come with a huge irony: The country’s decades-long, semi-secret record of collaborating with Israel on several fronts now seems to have been turned on its head. The most obvious reason for what amounts to a 180-degree turn in Singapore’s foreign policy is that, led by its Han Chinese majority and its globally oriented elites, it’s surrounded by huge Muslim nations – Malaysia, from which Singapore gained its independence in 1965, and Indonesia. Inevitably, the new tensions with Israel reflect Singapore’s own geopolitical calculations. There is also its need to maintain domestic “harmony” with the 936,000 Muslim residents who constitute one-sixth of its population.

Singapore and Israel share the condition of maintaining militaries that can keep masses of hostile forces at bay. Singapore (population: 5.4 million), with its armed forces’ famous ”poison shrimp” strategy of being able to inflict fatal damage on its enemy while being swallowed up, maintains more advanced fighter jets than Malaysia and Indonesia together (combined population: 317.8 million). Singapore’s 735 sq km island is honeycombed with tunnels and fortifications and emplacements and ramparts. The long, straight stretch leading into the city center from Singapore Changi Airport, lined with attractive planter boxes rife with bougainvillea, is actually hardened down several feet, and the planter boxes can be quickly bulldozed out of the way to create s secondary airstrip for fighter jets should the Air Force’s primary airport be rendered inoperative.

As Asia Sentinel reported on January 29, Singapore is widely believed, although there is no official confirmation, to possess and use the Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware, which can attach itself invisibly to almost any mobile phone without the user clicking on a malicious link, downloading software, or taking any action before becoming infected. Singapore’s Special Branch operatives are believed to use interrogation techniques developed by Israelis against suspected regime opponents. 

To understand the implications, step back and review the semi-secret history of their collaboration.

One needn’t indulge conspiracy theories or debate “who started” the Zionist/Arab wars in 1936, 1948, 1967, 1973, 2006, and 2009 to notice that Israel’s history of having to militarize coincided with Singapore’s in more ways than one and that it inflected both countries’ inclinations and judgments.

In 1965, when Singapore declared its independence, its first prime minister (and, for many years, its virtual dictator) Lee Kuan Yew asked Israel to design, set up, and supervise its military machine. Israel did precisely that. The Bonn International Center for Conversion published a worldwide survey ranking Israel as the world’s most militarized nation — and Singapore as the second-most. You can read about the Bonn Center’s ranking here. 

To find out how Israel and Singapore actually got together on this, you’d have to have been reading accounts like this one on “Israel’s Deep Dark Secret Love Affair” with Singapore in Haaretz, one of several Israeli newspapers that, even when partisan, are far more open about Israel itself than major U.S. news organizations are.

I knew nothing about this love affair in 2009, when, watching gleaming office parks and eight-lane expressways glide by my window on a Tel Aviv-to-Haifa train, I mentioned to my wife that Israel had become the Singapore of the Middle East. Singapore was the Israel of Southeast Asia, not only economically and geopolitically, as a glance at a couple of maps and statistical tables will suggest, but militarily.

Both Israel and Singapore became models of state capitalism, with high per-capita incomes and growth rates. Both had been governed and stamped by the British before they became independent. Both have had populations of fewer than 10 million, including more than a million second-class citizens and non-citizens, some of them migrants, some of them openly despised. And, again, both Israel and Singapore are non-Muslim countries facing much larger, less-than-friendly Muslim neighbors.

Another striking analogy involves the fact that Singapore’s politically dominant majority consists not of indigenous natives but of “overseas Chinese,” whose literary and commercial strengths long ago earned them the sobriquet “the Jews of Southeast Asia” and sometimes the envy and resentment due a wealthy, elitist, and supple minority.

Like Jews who live outside Israel, Han Chinese are minorities in most countries outside China. But here, a real difference dogs the similarity. The similarity is that in Singapore, the Chinese are 75 percent of the population, Malays are 15 percent, and Indians are 8 percent. In Israel, Jews are 76 percent, with the rest mostly Palestinian Arabs, most of them Muslim, some Christian. In Singapore, the Chinese have a status, power, and reputation that will seem familiar to Palestinians and others who regard Israel’s Jews as arrogant interlopers.

The difference is that Israel’s Jews, unlike Singapore’s Chinese, have never been the rooted, dominant majority in any other country besides ancient Israel itself, where Hebrew was spoken 700 years before Arabic. And there are other differences of consequence: Singapore is an island, a micro-state smaller in area and population than New York City’s five boroughs. Israel is many times larger geographically, and in some ways, it’s more dangerous and endangered.

The International Political Review has called Singapore’s armed forces “the most technologically advanced military in Southeast Asia” and notes that while everyone in the region fears China and no one could prevail against a Chinese onslaught, China fears that any such onslaught would bring a very painful Singapore Sting.

The punchline to all this, not very funny but very, very true, is that no sooner had Singapore gained its independence in August 1965 than its British-educated founder and first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew (whose eldest son is now prime minister), invited Israel to organize his armed forces, because he saw all the parallels between the two young nations that I’ve just noted.

On Christmas Eve, 1965, six Israel Defense Force officers and their families moved to Singapore, followed by waves of consulting teams that established the country’s “Total Defense” combat doctrines, its recruitment and training regimens, its intelligence services, and its state-of-art arms procurement.

 “We are not going to turn Singapore into an Israeli colony,” chief of staff and future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin admonished these teams. He needn’t have worried. Singapore’s highly intelligent, eloquent, ruthlessly energetic dictator knew how to collaborate without being colonized, something one couldn’t say about some of the Americans, notably those who were governing Yale, with whom Singapore collaborated until recently. Lee Kuan Yew was as deft and determined as the Han Chinese in other countries who, even as minorities, dominate major industries, banks, and even English-language media in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

The Israelis militarized Singaporean society, even with Israeli military songs, to which Lee’s soldiers marched in one of Singapore’s first real Independence Day parades. Less symbolically, they showed Singapore how to establish military conscription in a hitherto un-militaristic populace that, according to at least one survey, ranked the profession of soldier far below that of thief, while placing artists, teachers, and merchants on top.

So determined was Lee to adjust this that when Israel won the Six-Day War in 1967, vindicating his decision to work with it and boosting Singaporeans’ confidence in their Jewish military mentors, Singapore’s UN delegation surprised other Third World nations by abstaining on a resolution condemning Israel.

Israelis persuaded Lee – who was called on his death “Singapore’s Ben Gurion” – to make conscription universal to tap well-educated, prosperous Han Chinese as well as the Malay, Indian, and other minorities. That produced an intelligent, dynamic army and a disciplined male student population: Singaporean university students receive substantial tuition subsidies after military service but must accept what the National University of Singapore calls “a service bond under the terms of the tuition grant to work for a Singapore-registered company for three years upon completion of their degrees so as to discharge some of their obligations to the Singapore public.” In some professions, the mandatory service is to government agencies, for up to six years. The whole regimen, as most Israelis would recognize, produces more than a little griping, but little softness or self-indulgence.

Although Singaporean society hasn’t had to be on military alert as much as Israel, neither has it become the peaceful Switzerland of Southeast Asia, a region bristling with armies. But Singapore does have enough economic and military power to take another bit of advice that the Israelis of Rabin’s time gave to Singapore and that they should have taken more seriously themselves than they have under Benjamin Netanyahu: Keep your vast military in check while doing more to strengthen your diplomatic, cultural, and educational offerings.

Jim Sleeper is an American author and journalist and formerly was a lecturer in political science at Yale University. Parts of this appeared previously in the Huffington Post. Asia Sentinel editor John Berthelsen contributed to this report.