The art of saying everything while confirming nothing

CORRECTION NOTICE:

This post contains false statements of fact.

An article published by Declassified UK on 11 February 2026 alleged that two Singaporeans were serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during the Gaza conflict. Parliamentary Questions (PQs) were posed to the Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs on this issue. On 5 March 2026, the Minister replied to the PQs, stating that the Ministry for Home Affairs did not have any substantiated information that any Singaporean had served, or is serving, in the IDF; and that the Government has reached out to the Israeli Government for information but has not received a response.

The Declassified UK article did not provide any identifying information of these two alleged Singaporeans or any specific information that would enable the Government to identify them. The Government has no information on the veracity of these allegations, nor to find out the identity of these two alleged Singaporeans. The purpose of the Government’s request to the Israeli Government was precisely to request information on these two alleged Singaporeans. The Minister’s reply to the PQs was given based on all the information available to him, and it is false to suggest that the Government had specific information to act on, or that the Government is able to identify the two alleged Singaporeans.

At this juncture, the Government is not able to take any action under the Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) or assess if an offence under Section 125 of the Penal Code 1871 is disclosed, as it does not have information about the veracity of the allegations, nor on the identity of the two alleged Singaporeans. Singapore’s bilateral relationship with Israel is not the reason why no action has been taken against the two alleged Singaporeans.

For the same reasons, the Government is unable to verify whether any false statements of fact were made in the Declassified UK article. Consequently, no action was taken under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 against the Declassified UK article.

Singaporeans found to be fighting or planning to fight in foreign armed conflicts, regardless of the cause or side they are supporting, will be dealt with sternly in accordance with our laws, including under the ISA if they are found to be a threat to our national security.

For the correct facts, visit: https://www.factually.gov.sg/corrections-and-clarifications/260326

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The Online Citizen complies with this Correction Direction as required by law. Compliance does not constitute agreement.

We do not accept that our article of 5 March 2026 contained false statements of fact.

In summary, the Direction treats analytical inferences drawn from publicly observable conduct as if they were assertions of direct fact, and then assesses those reformulated assertions for falsity. Our article did not claim access to classified information or internal deliberations. It analysed parliamentary answers, legal frameworks, and enforcement patterns, and considered what those observable elements might reasonably imply.

The Direction attributes to us claims we did not make, reframes descriptions of professional conduct as allegations of improper intent, and treats structural policy analysis as assertions about internal decision-making.

We also note that the MHA–MINDEF joint statement of 24 March 2026 provides additional context relevant to the analytical questions addressed in our article.

For our full point-by-point response, see: Analytical Inference Is not a false statement of fact: Response to 26 March 2026 POFMA Direction

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There is a particular skill to answering questions in Parliament without actually answering them. K Shanmugam, a Senior Counsel with decades of legal practice before entering politics, demonstrated it with quiet precision on 5 March 2026.

The backdrop was a report published in February 2026 by British investigative outlet Declassified UK, which obtained Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) data through a freedom of information request showing that more than 50,000 soldiers holding Israeli nationality alongside at least one other citizenship had participated in the Gaza conflict. 

Within that dataset, two Singapore passport holders were identified. The report named no individuals and gave no details of their roles or the duration of their service.

The findings were nonetheless enough to prompt three Members of Parliament to file questions asking whether the government had verified the claims, whether investigations had been initiated, and whether Singapore law had been breached.

The answers from the Coordinating Minister for National Security and Minister for Home Affairs, taken together, reward considerably more scrutiny than they received in the chamber.

Asked whether the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) could confirm or deny the existence of these two individuals, Shanmugam deployed a masterclass in forensic language management. He did not say the individuals do not exist. He did not say the Declassified UK report was false. He said — very carefully — that MHA has "no substantiated information." Not no information. Substantiated information.

That single adjective carries the weight of the entire response.

He confirmed a formal request had been made to Israel, which itself implies Singapore had something specific enough to act on diplomatically. You do not write a formal request to a foreign government about people you have no reason to believe exist.

To appreciate what MHA's investigative apparatus is actually capable of, consider the case of Mohamed Khairul Riduan Mohamed Sarip, a former MOE teacher arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in October 2022. Khairul had not travelled to Gaza. He had not joined Hamas. He had not crossed a single border.

Yet when Shanmugam addressed the media on 11 January 2023, he did not speak in vague terms about a general security concern.

He described, with precision, that the Internal Security Department (ISD) knew Khairul had checked specific travel routes and flight options to Gaza, sought advice from individuals based there, attempted to learn Arabic to communicate with Hamas soldiers, and researched the group's tactics and operations. Some of these plans had first formed in 2012 — more than a decade before his arrest. ISD had not merely detected a threat. It had reconstructed a man's intentions across eleven years.

The proposition that this same apparatus, when presented with an official foreign military dataset identifying two Singapore passport holders by nationality, is left with "no substantiated information" is a considerable ask of the reader's credulity.

There is a further irony in Shanmugam's own public framing. At that same January 2023 doorstop, he drew a careful distinction between legitimate support for the Palestinian cause — moral solidarity, financial donations, working through reputable organisations — and armed violence, which he described as unacceptable.

It was a binary that served its purpose at the time. But it has no clean place for two individuals who served not in Hamas, not in a designated terrorist organisation, but in the military of a sovereign state with which Singapore maintains cordial, if quietly conducted, relations. His own framework, in other words, does not straightforwardly reach them either.

ISD's detention orders in cases like his are not vague. They are precise, detailed, and chronological — documenting specific videos watched, specific years in which intentions formed and reformed, specific online materials consumed. The Internal Security Department does not stumble upon such information. It assembles it methodically, often over years, from surveillance, immigration data, and intelligence work that operates well below the public waterline.

The proposition that this same apparatus cannot identify two individuals who appear by nationality in an official foreign military dataset — a dataset obtained through a lawful freedom of information request — is a significant ask of the reader's credulity.

The silence on the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) compounds this further. Shanmugam is not merely a minister who has access to the instrument — he is arguably its most frequent user.

Directions issued under his watch have targeted social media posts, online commentary, and claims far more modest in consequence than a foreign outlet alleging that Singapore nationals fought in a foreign war. He has shown no reluctance to deploy POFMA swiftly and publicly when a statement is, in the government's assessment, false.

He did not deploy it here.

To understand what that silence means, it is worth recalling what Shanmugam himself demonstrated in Parliament on 4 October 2021, during the Raeesah Khan affair.

When the then-Workers' Party Member of Parliament alleged she had witnessed police misconduct while accompanying a sexual assault survivor, Shanmugam told Parliament that police had already spent considerable time searching their records since the allegation was first raised — and could find no matching case. He pressed Khan publicly and on the record for the police station, the month, the year, and descriptions of the officers involved.

The point was unmistakable: MHA searches its records when allegations are made, and when those records yield nothing, it says so — clearly, publicly, and with force.

That same standard now applies in reverse. If MHA had searched its immigration records, travel databases, and existing intelligence files — as it demonstrably has the capability and institutional habit to do — and found no trace of the two individuals flagged in the Declassified UK dataset, the most natural response would have been categorical denial. Possibly POFMA. Certainly something firmer than "no substantiated information."

Then there is the question of what legal tools Singapore could actually deploy if it did act.

When WP MP Fadli Fawzi asked directly whether Section 125 of the Penal Code 1871 applied — the provision criminalising the waging of war against a state at peace with Singapore — Shanmugam did not say yes. He said applicability depends on the facts and requires investigation, before pivoting to the ISA as the instrument authorities have historically preferred.

That non-answer is its own answer. Section 125 was designed for a different era and a different kind of conflict. Applying it to individuals who served in the military of a state with which Singapore maintains cordial relations — and with which it has longstanding, if quietly conducted, defence and intelligence ties — would require legal contortions that even a Senior Counsel might hesitate to attempt in open court.

Which leaves the ISA. And here the geopolitical trap closes entirely.

The ISA has been used against individuals radicalised toward Hamas, toward the Taliban, toward armed jihadist violence. It is an instrument built for threats to Singapore's internal security and social fabric. Deploying it against individuals who served in the Israel Defense Forces — the military of a state Singapore has never designated as a threat — would represent an extraordinary diplomatic rupture with Israel, at a moment when Singapore's carefully balanced foreign policy position on the Gaza conflict is already under considerable scrutiny.

Shanmugam is not a man who stumbles into corners. The careful architecture of his parliamentary response — the qualified language, the deferred legal analysis, the diplomatic framing around the Israeli request — begins to look less like caution and more like the considered management of an impossible situation.

He cannot easily deny. He cannot easily act. And so he has chosen, with characteristic precision, to do neither — while sounding entirely like he is doing both.

It was the answer of a veteran lawyer who understands that sometimes the most powerful legal strategy is simply to keep every door open and walk through none of them.