Project Esther: "Hold my beer, 2025!"

Under a transparent paint job of "combating antisemitism," the Heritage Foundation is urging the criminalization of non-hatred of Muslims.

We’ve all heard of Project 2025¹, the blueprint written by the Christian Nationalist think tank Heritage Foundation² to guide the current US administration in its quest to “appoint ideologically aligned civil servants, restrict abortion access, oppose LGBTQ+ rights, transform federal agencies for political purposes, and impose strict immigration policies.”

The Heritage Foundation would be very happy if holding this sign was illegal.

Less well known, but equally scary, is another offering from Heritage: Project Esther, hurriedly published in October 2024 right after Trump won the election. Project Esther purports to be about combating antisemitism, but as we shall see, its true purpose has almost nothing to do with that.

In 2023, Heritage invented the “National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism”³ which was little more than a name that they could stamp on Project Esther as its author. And exactly as everyone knew would happen, one of the first things Trump did was to replicate this task force within DOJ as per Heritage’s outline⁴ — stating that it would immediately commence searching for antisemitism on college campuses.

Well, we know what happened. In just these first few months, over 1,000 foreign students at 170 colleges and universities have had their student visas illegally revoked⁵ for participating in protests of Israel’s indiscriminate warfare against the population of Gaza. But for many it’s been much worse: Palestinians Mohsen Mahdawi, Leqaa Kordia, and Mahmoud Khalil, Turk Rumeysa Ozturk, and South Korean Yunseo Chung are among those who have been arrested, detained without charges, and/or deported. Not for any crimes, mind you: for going against Project Esther.

But Project Esther combats antisemitism, right? Isn’t that a good thing? Well, not really and kinda. Yes, combating antisemitism is a great thing and we need more of it. But it’s not at all what Project Esther’s actual goal is. As many of the attorneys for these arrested students have pointed out, “the government wrongly conflates their criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza with antisemitism, and their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism.”

To be very clear:

• Criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza IS NOT antisemitism. Not even close.

• Advocacy for Palestinian rights IS NOT extremism.

One tip that Esther is not about antisemitism is that it was written by evangelical Christians without any Jewish involvement.⁶ They even went so far as to say (page 27) “Given the nature of our charge, we may seek moral guidance from relevant religious texts.”

I shall now make three points that I believe support this characterization of Project Esther. It is fundamentally a White Nationalist and Christian Nationalist framework, and disingenuously cloaks itself in “combating antisemitism” to make it sound palatable to lawmakers:

1. Esther targets only immigrants and people on the political left, and makes no effort to target antisemitism on the political right.

2. Most antisemitism in the United States is on the political right.

3. Esther explicitly seeks to criminalize Muslims, not antisemites.

And each of these will be thoroughly referenced. OK? Here we go:

1. Esther targets only people on the political left, and makes no effort to target antisemitism on the political right.