• Project Esther targets pro-Palestine groups, stating they are a threat to the U.S, delegitimising their activism & suppressing their dissent against Israeli policies.
• The document proposes severe measures, including financial audits, legal action, and monitoring to silence these groups.
The Heritage Foundation released a 10,000-word “Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” This manifesto, released on October 7, directly accuses pro-Palestine groups of being “decidedly antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American,” making erroneous claims that they work to advance Hamas’s interests in violation of American values and security.
The Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation has shifted its focus to what it terms the “Hamas Support Network” (HSN), targeting organisations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine under the guise of combating antisemitism.
The document paints American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) as the hub of this so-called “network,” alleging its “action arms” include groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine. These organisations, fallaciously asserts, are “Hamas Support Organisations” (HSOs) responsible for propaganda, recruitment, and protests with backing from groups such as Open Society Foundations and Tides Foundation.
The presence of Jewish pro-Palestinian groups in America directly challenges the Zionist narrative that supporting Palestine equates to antisemitism. These organisations demonstrate that advocating for Palestinian rights is a matter of justice and grave human rights violations.
Consequently, by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, Project Esther seeks to delegitimise millions of Americans opposing the barbarism of the Israeli regime. The authors aim to prevent these groups from accessing the American public sphere, stating their ultimate goal is to ensure these organisations “will not be able to generate any political pressure on the U.S. government or the U.S.–Israel relationship.”
“This is the latest attempt to use the American Jewish community to advance the far-Right’s repressive agenda,” remarked Stephanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. Columbia professor Joseph Howley added that the project reflects the broader authoritarian tendencies of the Christian-nationalist right, warning of its dangerous implications for democracy and free speech.
The project proposes draconian measures to suppress dissent. These include weaponising financial and academic audits, “naming and shaming,” and deploying federal laws like the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO), and counterterrorism statutes to investigate and criminalise these groups. It also envisions barring them from protests, disrupting their communication channels, and monitoring their networks.
The document reads:
…by the promotion of a view that reduces all human interaction to a heroic struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. The victim status of the oppressed, in this view, grants them license to pursue any course of action. Jews, Israelis, and all proud Americans in this case have been cast in the role of the implacable oppressors and the Palestinians, Arab or Muslim, in the role of their victims.
Here we see how Zionists seem to have returned to their familiar position of “it’s complicated.” Let’s take a look at the stats: In October alone, Israel’s genocidal assault on northern Gaza, almost entirely isolated the area, killed more than 1,800 people since early October, forcibly displaced more than 100,000 people, cut off humanitarian aid and imposed a famine on the estimated 75,000 people. Evidently, the Palestinians are a people enduring systemic oppression. Oppression, in any form, is inherently inhumane and morally indefensible, as it contradicts the fundamental principles of human rights and justice. Discussing oppression in this manner is a violation of any ethical framework, actively undermining the very essence of moral integrity and human dignity.
The document continues to assert:
The anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jew-haters attempting to lay siege to our education system, political processes, and government have not simply been influenced by this way of thinking—they have enthusiastically adopted it. This makes them a threat not just to American Jewry, but to all Americans.
Interestingly, a Gallup poll released earlier this year found that 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the Israeli military’s actions in the Gaza Strip. The claim of being “a threat to all Americans” is an utterly hollow and desperate attempt at fearmongering, designed to stoke unwarranted panic. Such an assertion relies on inflammatory rhetoric rather than substantiated argument, aiming to manipulate emotions and obscure the real issues at hand.
Project Esther is an alarming push to institutionalise the suppression of pro-Palestine advocacy and dissent, weaponising government power to achieve its Zionist objectives.
