In Gaza’s ruins, in refugee classrooms, in the digital spaces where Palestinian words keep resurfacing despite censorship, the same ancient truth breathes again: You can control the narrative, but never the truth itself
Every dictatorship has one obsession — control.
Control of bodies, of land, of imagination, and above all, of truth. The methods differ across centuries, but the intent remains the same: to suppress awareness and divert attention from injustice.
In ancient Rome, emperors understood this well. As the empire rotted from within, they fed the population panem et circenses — bread and circuses — to keep citizens content and distracted. Gladiatorial games and grain distributions dulled the hunger for justice.
People grew accustomed to spectacle, numbed to oppression, and entertained into silence.
History may never repeat itself perfectly, but it often rhymes. The same pattern of domination — censorship, diversion, and manipulation — echoes today in Palestine.
The architecture of distraction
While Palestinians in Gaza endure siege, starvation, and bombardment, much of the world is occupied with distractions — celebrity diplomacy, sports tournaments, political theatre.
The machinery of global entertainment serves as a modern-day circus, absorbing public attention while the occupation continues unchallenged.
Even within Israel, the politics of diversion flourish. Public discourse oscillates between “security” and “self-defence,” deflecting from the structural realities of apartheid. The narrative is carefully managed to pacify dissent and present domination as a necessity.
Bread and circuses, updated for the age of propaganda.
Censorship and the control of knowledge
Dictatorships know that ideas can be more dangerous than weapons. In occupied Palestine, the suppression of thought and expression is systematic. Palestinian journalists are detained, artists silenced, books and archives destroyed. In Gaza, universities have been reduced to rubble; in the West Bank, academics are routinely harassed and restricted from travel.
Beyond the region, Palestinian voices face another kind of censorship — algorithmic erasure on Facebook, Instagram, X. Posts about the occupation vanish from social media feeds; words like Gaza or resistance trigger automated suppression.
The world’s largest platforms have become digital gatekeepers, reinforcing the silence that empires require to sustain their narratives.
To control knowledge is to control possibility. When education and culture are suffocated, resistance becomes harder to imagine.
The Colonisation of Culture
Just as Rome appropriated the gods and rituals of conquered peoples, Israel’s occupation extends beyond land into the cultural sphere.
Palestinian cuisine (Hummus, falafel, tabbouleh, maqluba), embroidery, and folklore are routinely rebranded as “Israeli heritage.” The erasure of identity becomes another form of control — a psychological occupation.
Yet culture also remains the space where Palestinians resist most powerfully. From poetry and film to music and visual art, creative expression endures as a form of defiance. It asserts existence where the occupier demands silence.
The Pattern that Repeats
What connects ancient Rome to modern occupation is not time, but technique. Empires always fear awareness. They fear educated citizens, uncensored speech, and collective memory. And so, they build distractions, censor dissent, and monopolise truth.
Palestine today is not merely a geographic site of struggle; it is a mirror reflecting humanity’s oldest contest — between power and truth, silence and expression, spectacle and conscience.
The tactics of control may evolve, but history’s lesson remains unchanged: every empire eventually falls, yet the voices it tried to silence endure.
In the End
Bread and circuses can pacify, but not forever. The human spirit — the drive to speak, to create, to resist — always outlives the walls built to contain it.
In Gaza’s ruins, in refugee classrooms, in the digital spaces where Palestinian words keep resurfacing despite censorship, the same ancient truth breathes again: You can control the narrative, but never the truth itself.
- Sõzarn Barday is a writer and lawyer based in South Africa, with a particular interest in human rights in the Middle East. The views expressed are her own.