The construct of social cohesion dates to the late nineteenth century, developing over time as a metric for measuring a society’s resilience and prosperity (Fonseca, Lukosch, and Brazier 2019). Social cohesion has also entered popular discourse, where it is brandished as an unexamined “good.” In this form, it has become an essential tool in the arsenal of the Western consensus, used to push the Palestinian narrative into a shadowy realm of the deviant and criminal. Emerging empirical evidence in reportage, legislative activities, and the application of law used to undergird the limits of public discourse and civic disruption support this claim.

The battle for narrative representation, though intensified in the era of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, has a history as old (or as recent) as Israel itself. The narrative of the Palestinian Nakba, an incomplete process beginning in 1948, has for almost eight decades been censored and silenced—in mainstream media outlets and government positions across the Western world, perhaps most vehemently, in the Anglosphere. This occlusion makes sense given that the Nakba was auspiced by an imperial international consensus—the newly established United Nations—which in sanctioning the Partition Resolution (181), also sanctioned the establishment of the last settler-colony to be created, in a historic sense, and a new colonial order in Palestine.

The chief sticking point for both legibility and dissemination of the Palestinian narrative is the fact that the birth of Israel was concomitant with the erasure of Palestine. This has relegated the Palestinian experience, whether as individuals or as a polity, to what Daniel Hallin later theorized (regarding Vietnam), as “the sphere of deviance” (1986, 117). This is not owing to controversy about what happened, although archival suppression continues to hinder the production of knowledge about the full extent of the Palestinian catastrophe. Israel’s New Historians from different ends of the political spectrum and interpretation came to similar conclusions about what happened in 1948. Despite this, Palestinian insistence that 1948 is a vital origin for analyzing contemporary exchanges between Israel and the Palestinians, is consistently excised from mainstream discourse and relegated to Hallin’s sphere of deviance.

In the twenty-first century, coverage of Israeli assaults on Palestinian territory has shifted. As recently as the 2021 Unity Intifada—catalysed in part by the connection drawn with the Black Lives Matter movement—it appeared that significant changes in narrative representation was underway (Sahhar 2023). By the time of the genocide in Gaza, it seemed that Palestinian voices and perspectives had undergone a repositioning in media outlets, now situated within Hallin’s “sphere of legitimate controversy.” Yet when the Western consensus failed to intervene, and continued to supply munitions to the Israeli Defense Force, the issue of public perception was defrayed by instead re-defining the sphere of legitimate controversy once again; pressing the issues raised by Palestinian actors and their allies in Western societies back towards the realm of the unacceptable as highlighted in a New York Times article in November 2024 deploring the impact of pro-Palestinian protest. Britain’s largest music festival, Glastonbury, attracted similar coverage in June 2025. As the Israeli authored genocide of Palestinian people continues, and notwithstanding a report by the Centre for Media Monitoring which has documented the BBC’s systematic bias against Palestinians in Gaza, the BBC took precautions to not broadcast Irish band Kneecap’s set, already well known for their solidarity with Palestinian people. What they did not anticipate was the preceding act, Bob Vylan’s solidarity chants, which it did live screen. Bob Vylan has been faced with swift criminal inquiry; the actions which the band critiqued continue unchecked.

Public discourse in Australia reflects this pattern. In December 2023, for instance, the Australian public broadcaster, ABC, removed an installation representing journalists killed in the first months of the genocide, rather than amplifying the story. The installation was itself a response to the ABC’s handling of the death of a Palestinian journalist employed by the ABC (Sahhar 2024). An open letter within the media community urging employers to produce fairer coverage of Gaza instead led to journalists being removed from coverage altogether in some workplaces; others received warnings of a perceived threat to their journalistic impartiality.

In October 2024, when the Palestinian community arranged vigils commemorating a year of genocide in Gaza, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese labeled these commemorations “incredibly provocative,” and expressed worry about “social cohesion.” By late November 2024, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan had introduced a legislative overhaul to the state’s anti-vilification laws; notably including new reference to social cohesion. On a social media platform, Allan asserted “this isn’t about the Middle East.” Yet the law seems to target both pro-Palestinian organizing and legitimate criticism of Israel. This reflects a broader trend in Australian politics and assertions in the media that antisemitism would be a key issue in the 2025 federal election. In January 2025, the Australian government announced a federal task force to address antisemitism, building on a series of measures introduced in 2024. In contrast, the government has taken scant action on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim attacks in the Australian community, much less the systemic drivers of such attacks which continue unaddressed.

This situation in Australia pales against the repression of Palestinian citizens of Israel.  By December 2023, Israel had arrested more than 270 citizens in a crackdown on free speech and political activity; a trend which continued throughout 2024. Common charges included “incitement to terrorism” and “incitement to violence.” Palestinian testimony indicates arrests followed professions of anti-war positions, while a statement from Israel’s Ministry of National Security framed the situations as follows: “Freedom of speech is not the freedom to incite . . . which harms public safety and our security.”

In both settler-colonial states, which aver commitment to democratic values, it is protest and minor civic disruption in defense of Palestinian rights and lives, rather than Israeli action, which are framed as threatening to social cohesion. As such, Israel’s genocide in Gaza is marked in both places by a concern to maintain “order” through repressive action, framed as the protection of “social cohesion.” Social cohesion has become a vehicle to create hierarchies of discrimination to maintain an ill-defined public good. Yet this is just a recent iteration of a longstanding unspoken standard that denies discussion of Palestinian self-determination or Israeli settler colonialism in Western democracies; and which Israel has legislated against.

Despite long delimitation, and recent re-assertion of the delimitation, of public discourse through the language of social cohesion, even the facade of settler-colonial civility is under threat. As I finalized this essay (originally in February 2025), Israeli Police detained well-known Palestinian Jerusalemite booksellers Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna of the Educational Bookshop, and seized publications including a volume entitled Love Wins. The BBC reported that this “raised dark images from history where authoritarian regimes often began their assault on freedoms and minority rights with such actions”; although the assault on Palestinian archives and intellectuals already has a long and well-documented history.

Outside the Munas’ court hearing, many gathered in support, including international diplomats; Australian officials were not reported to be among them.

What is the line between social cohesion and repression; after the last sixteen months can anyone still believe that their governments know where that line is?