SINGAPORE, Oct 21 — The Israel-Hamas war raises concerns that it could potentially trigger the radicalisation of some youths in Singapore, said experts, but they warned against stereotyping any one group as being potential extremists.
They were speaking to TODAY as the conflict entered its third week, with more than 5,000 people killed in Israel and Palestine, and as images and headlines of the destruction flood social media feeds.
The terrorism and inter-faith experts noted that terrorist groups have previously “hijacked” sentiments arising from past armed conflicts to radicalise individuals.
The lack of understanding of the long-drawn Israel-Palestine conflict, along with oversimplified and skewed narratives portraying the war as a religious one, may add to the risk of radicalisation, the experts added.
However, not only Muslims are susceptible to the risk of radicalisation, said the experts, noting incidents of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia being reported globally. Stereotyping only one particular group may only hinder efforts to build trust between communities, they said.
Oversimplification and skewed narratives
Michael Genkin from the Singapore Management University (SMU) said that past episodes of violent events such as the Iraq War and the war in Syria have led to the radicalisation of a few who “sympathise with one of the sides for co-ethnic or co-religious reasons”.
While it is only a minority who become radicalised, it can be “sufficient to cause harm”.
“We should therefore be vigilant but not fall prey to stereotypes,” said the assistant professor of sociology whose research interest includes terrorism and political violence.
TODAY has previously interviewed youths who were once detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) after their sympathy for victims in such armed conflicts led them down a long and gradual path of radicalisation.
Mohamed Feisal Mohamed Hassan, research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, said that the Palestinian-Israel conflict remains “among the common factors” exploited by extremists groups to leverage support.
This was seen in the Jemaah Islamiyah arrests in 2001, when 13 people were detained under the ISA for making plans to bomb several targets in Singapore.
“Such radical groups have hijacked the conflict and painted it simply as a religious conflict between Muslims and Jews,” said Mohamed Feisal, who is also the secretary and a counselor at the Religious Rehabilitation Group (RRG).
“With the extended use of social media today and such simplification, there will always be a possibility that vulnerable youths can be pulled towards the conflict without understanding the real political context of the conflict,” he said.
Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, founder of non-governmental organisation Centre for Interfaith Understanding Singapore, believes that youths may not be able to ”make sense of the complexity of the situation and the nuances for each cycle of violence. The risk therefore is about the narratives surrounding the conflict”.
Genkin added: “The advent of social media presents an amplifying factor because emotionally charged and highly graphic images and videos are easily spread on social networks.”
While some of these may be fake or taken from different conflicts, even real images need to be put in the proper context as they can be rhetorically framed to manipulate and radicalise, he said.
Not a religious conflict
Like Mohamed Feisal, Mohamed Imran said the “grand narrative” positioning the Israel-Hamas conflict as one between Jews and Muslims was most concerning to him.
“This has the potential of radicalisation because the religious identity runs deep,” he said, adding that there has been an active circulation and reproduction of anti-Semitic ideas online as well as in print.
“As part of my research, I have observed many negative stereotypes about Jews in Malay public discourse, both online or in books that are easily accessible in our neighbouring countries,” he added.
“Without an active countering of such narratives and without a real understanding of the complexities of the Israel-Palestine conflict, youths may be susceptible to extremist narratives.”
Mohamed Feisal stressed that the ongoing conflict is not one between Islam and Judaism.
“Rather, it is a conflict in the occupied state of Palestine. Within Palestine itself, Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs and even Jews are living together, while Israel itself has different political factions that are in contention to govern it,” he said, illustrating the complexity of the situation.
“Within RRG, in such cases among those who we have counselled, the conflict is discussed in its real political context, and such discussion leads to providing a larger understanding of the reality of the different players who are involved in this geo-political conflict.”
Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia both on the rise
Raffaello Pantucci, senior fellow at RSIS, said that one worry following the conflict is the rise of anti-Semitism.
“While clearly there’s a lot of sympathy among the Muslim world for the Palestinian cause, this enrages a lot of people towards Jews and that can cause a problem of anti-Semitism — which has always been a consistent issue with radicalisation across the ideological spectrum, but clearly after current events it will be enhanced,” he said.
Mohamed Imran noted that there is a rise of anti-Semitism among Muslims who do not realise that “not all Jews are Israeli and not all Jews identify with the State of Israel”.
Other experts including Genkin added that it was important to note that radicalisation is not specific to Muslims.
“In fact, Muslims themselves have been victims of Islamophobic violence, and vigilance against radicalisation should be a broad concern for all communities,” he said.
Mohamed Imran added: “We had seen the example of a hate crime towards a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy who was stabbed to death recently after his mother told the attacker that they should pray for peace.”
He stressed that people must be careful not to convey panic and fear of Muslims or paint a negative stereotype towards them, as it would not be helpful in building trust and solidarity between communities.
“An alarmist approach can end up feeding into the extremist narrative: That ‘Muslims are under threat and are oppressed everywhere’ and that the lines are drawn between ‘us and them’,” he said.
Critically handling deluge of online information
Several youths TODAY spoke to said they are cognisant of the biases present in both news and social media, and are wary of taking content related to the conflict at face value.
Manfred Tham, a sociology student, found that a fair amount of content is about “rage-baiting people into reading or clicking”.
“These are corporations that are beholden to their investors, with bias at every segment,” said the 27-year-old.
“As for individual posters, they also have cultural biases — and that’s fine. People need to be more comfortable with cognitive dissonance in holding multiple seemingly contrary viewpoints.”
Another youth, who wanted to be known only as Manuel, said that people “can be very emotional” when they see content and that it might cloud their judgements, but he prefers to “see the whole picture before making any conclusions”.
For Sarah Al-Attas, she has long kept herself informed about the conflict in the Middle East by watching documentaries and following international news from multiple sources.
Besides news sites, she also reads both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel social media accounts, she added.
“I trust some sources but not all. For context, I will try my best to fact-check by checking the journalists’ credibility, what news outlet they’re with, and so on,” said the 22-year-old university student.
The experts who spoke to TODAY said identifying the source of a content and corroborating them with others to compare how the narratives are being framed are ways that youths can be vigilant in consuming media amid the heightened conflict.
“I think the extremist content that you need to worry about is the stuff that is presenting it in a very binary way — and is only presenting one side of the coin,” said Pantucci.
On diffusing the sentiments surrounding the current conflict, some experts said it is useful to provide the public with constructive platforms to channel their sympathy, such as donation drives to fund humanitarian aid for the civillian victims.
“Give people routes to actually get to aid and support if they want to. And the Government can facilitate that and I think that’s the critical thing to do,” said Pantucci.
The experts also stressed the importance of tackling misinformation online and continuously building bridges between communities offline.
“When a Muslim has a Jewish close friend, he will not be taken in by extremist ideas about Jews. When a Jew has a Muslim as a close friend, he will not feel fearful of Muslims in general,” said Mohamed Imran.
“Such trust between people is what builds resilience in a time when communities can be pulled apart in an ‘us versus them’ mentality.” — TODAY
