As if Project 2025 – the 900-page repressive blueprint for the US put together by scores of Donald Trump-tied political staffers – wasn’t enough, the Heritage Foundation has released another lengthy and radical document, this time targeting pro-Palestine and anti-war Americans.
The 10,000-word “Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism” targets what it calls the “Hamas Support Network” (HSN), made up of groups that the document claims are "decidedly antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American" and "involved in furthering Hamas’s cause in contravention of American values and to the detriment of American citizens and America’s national security interests.”
The network, the project says, revolves around American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) with "action arms" comprised of what the project falsely claims are "Hamas Support Organizations" (HSOs), including Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, that recruit members, spread propaganda, and conduct rallies with the support of "a coalition of leftist, progressive organizations" such as the Open Society Foundations and Tides Foundation.
Released on Oct. 7 – the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel's subsequent genocide in Gaza – the project emerged just weeks before the election but has garnered no attention whatsoever in the US mainstream media.
There has already been wide repression of Americans speaking out against US support for Israel’s genocide of Palestine, but Project Esther embodies a right-wing push to institutionalize the repression through the weaponization of government — especially one led by Trump. While the former president has previously tried to distance himself from Project 2025 (unconvincingly, given the litany of ties between him and the authors), this effort seems catered directly to him. “Our intent is to organize and guide all willing and able partners in a coordinated effort that employs all available resources to combat the scourge of antisemitism in the United States,” the authors write. “Our hope is that this effort will represent an opportunity for public-private partnership when a willing Administration occupies the White House.” (Emphasis not added.) The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
This is “the latest attempt to use the American Jewish community to advance the far-Right’s repressive agenda,” said Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Stephanie Fox.
Joseph Howley, a Columbia professor who has been involved in organizing Jewish faculty against the war and the instrumentalization of antisemitism, told Zeteo that the “far-right Zionist hegemonists have wanted for years to make being an anti-Zionist or non-Zionist or Israel-critical Jew illegal. This year they’ve succeeded in getting universities to make it policy …. Now they want to make it federal law.”
Project Esther “is just more of the same enthusiastic authoritarianism from the American Christian-nationalist right, made all the scarier by the thousands of lives it’s costing overseas and the willingness of so much of this country’s Jewish institutional establishment to sign onto it,” Howley added. “It’s disgraceful.”
Freedom of Speech Does Not Apply
Project Esther equates anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel to antisemitism, and, moreover, anti-Americanism. It casts millions of Americans opposed to Israel’s violence in Palestine – and US support of it – as opportunistic, foreign-funded, and inauthentic. The authors claim that groups “pounced” on Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, “intending to use it as a George Floyd–style event to spring onto center stage and grab a giant microphone.”
The project aims to prohibit these groups from accessing America's "open society" or economy, empower the executive branch to prosecute these organizations, and ban the groups from protests.
To fulfill their goals, the authors envision using financial and academic audits, “name and shame” campaigns, and “lawfare” – including utilizing the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and, astonishingly, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), as well as counterterrorism, hate speech, and immigration laws. They also seek to disrupt communications between and among the targeted groups and monitor their social networks.
Project Esther’s authors write that the task will require “a broad coalition of willing and able partners to leverage existing—and, if required, work to establish additional—authorities, resources, capabilities, and activities.” If things go well, the authors write, the targeted groups “will not be able to generate any political pressure on the U.S. government or the U.S.–Israel relationship.” So, in essence, the effort seeks to prevent these groups from participating in American democracy.
The authors apparently don’t see those opposed to US support for Israel’s violence in Palestine as meritably American.
By PREM THAKKER OCT 29, 2024