Unlike in the 2000s, however, “anyone with a handphone” today will be confronted with images of the conflict, says Chan, who was Singapore’s chief of army before entering politics in 2011. “We have an entire generation of people, who have grown up in relative peace, but [are] now confronted with these images, every day of their lives. With the kinds of algorithms that many of these new media have, if we’re not careful, we get into an echo chamber; we form views that are perhaps not as discerning as we wish it to be.”
The conflict between Israel and Hamas is a multifaceted situation with a long history, and together with the Russia-Ukraine war, Singaporeans are being confronted with “very harsh and brutal” conflict for the first time in decades, says Minister for Education Chan Chun Sing.
Speaking at a Jan 22 event organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), Chan says this is perhaps the first time that younger Singaporeans are witnessing a major conflict. “If you recall, the last major situation where we had a loss of life was perhaps the Iraq War and, maybe to some extent, 9/11.”
