Project Esther: Next chapter of Project 2025 plans destruction of Palestine solidarity movement

Project 2025 has a new chapter: Project Esther. Unveiled by the ultra-right Heritage Foundation on the one-year anniversary of Israel launching its genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza, Project Esther claims to present a “national strategy to combat antisemitism.”

The document claims that anti-Zionism and pro-peace sentiments are always and in every case equivalent to antisemitism. It calls for infiltrating, surveilling, and destroying groups it identifies as being affiliated with an alleged “global Hamas support network.”

Targeted organizations include, but are not limited to: Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Alliance for Global Justice, the Tides Foundation, and even the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It bizarrely alleges that these groups’ motivations and understanding of history come “straight from the pages” of the Communist Manifesto.

Neither the Klan nor neo-Nazis are identified as possible targets in the project outline, as if antisemitism does not exist among the network of white supremacist organizations that support MAGA.

The full text of “Project Esther” is available on the Heritage Foundation website.

It calls for “partners” to engage in a crackdown on education, speech, organizing, and fundraising that questions or challenges Israeli government policy. It proposes that the executive branch of the U.S. government prosecute organizations that are critical of Israel. “Our hope is that this effort will represent an opportunity for public-private partnership when a willing Administration occupies the White House” [emphasis in the original].

This addendum to Project 2025 charges 16 members of Congress with leading an “active cabal of Jew-haters, Israel-haters, and America-haters in Washington” and labels them the “Hamas caucus.” The document goes on to lament that more Jewish lawmakers voted against the effort to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., than for it. It claims that all ten Jewish senators hold “anti-Israel positions [that] are both notorious and inexplicable.”

Much of the blame for what the document defines as “rising antisemitism” is aimed at the Jewish community itself, calling it “complacent” and “disengaged,” with some elements even sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The document frets that such sympathies are on the rise.

According to Project Esther, the supposed “Hamas support network” has the following goals: legitimizing demonstrations in support of Palestinian rights, weakening U.S. military aid to and diplomatic support of the Israeli military’s campaign against the Palestinian people, and advocating “passive” recognition of a Palestinian state entity that would include Hamas.

The document argues that these objectives put not only “American Jewry” but even “America itself” in danger.

Reporting from Jewish Insider suggests that Heritage faced great difficulty in finding actual Jewish organizations to become “partners” in its project, though. Many of the organizations Heritage claimed helped them create Project Esther say they actually had no role in drafting it at all, including the World Jewish Congress and the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Instead, Evangelical Christian organizations seemed to play a major part in writing it, and it is likely Christian voters rather than Jewish ones who are the target audience of the Heritage campaign.

The name Project Esther is derived from a Biblical story from the Book of Esther. According to the story, which took place in Persia in the 5th century B.C., Esther, who was married to the king, intervened to save the Jewish people from threatened genocide.

Counter to the humanity of its namesake, Project Esther is ruthless. Foreign-born members of targeted organizations are to be deported. Sympathetic educators and staff are to be fired and foreign students and faculty politically screened for visa purposes. Sympathy or affiliation with targeted organizations would result in an employment blacklist.

Terms like “social network analysis” are used in the document to describe surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of social justice movements. Infiltration is endorsed as a tactic to sow distrust between organizations. The document even proposes identifying “critical nodes”—human individuals—whose “removal” would be a major step toward destroying organizations the Heritage Foundation views as hostile to the corporate interests of both Israel and the United States.

Recalling the McCarthy era, even a whiff of sympathy for Palestinians would be enough to label an organization or individual part of the so-called Hamas network. The document notes that essentially any group that seeks to “unravel the fabric of American society” could be linked to this fantasy network, qualifying it for destruction. Thus, a war against anti-Israel sentiment would likewise be a war against the enemies of the Heritage Foundation.

Just as Project 2025 proposes a timeline of just 100 days to dismantle the federal government and rebuild it according to the diktats of the extreme right, its addendum Project Esther envisions wiping out “anti-Israel sentiment” in the United States in just 12-24 months.

By the end of this period, according to Heritage, there would be no more pro-Palestine demonstrations in the United States and those sympathetic to the cause would be deported, in prison, destitute, or driven underground. The Jewish community in the United States would likewise be purged of any elements sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

The Heritage Foundation sees itself coordinating and directing efforts at all levels of government as well as within “academic, social, legal, financial, and religious spheres” to execute the plan.

With the election now less than three weeks away, and with the White House finally proposing an arms embargo if Israel does not ease off its genocidal rampage in Gaza in a month’s time, it is clear that the Heritage Foundation agrees with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on who should become president of the United States in November.

The outcomes of a Trump victory for not just the pro-Palestine movement, but all progressive movements, is laid bare in the pages of Project Esther.

As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Taryn Fivek

Taryn Fivek is a reporter for People's World in New York.