What Is the Dangerous “Esther Project” Endorsed by Trump?

On October 7, 2024—marking one year since the start of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza that has claimed over 53,000 Palestinian lives—the Washington-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation released a political paper titled “The Esther Project: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.”

This same think tank is also behind “Project 2025,” a blueprint for expanding executive power in the U.S. and implementing what many have called one of the most dystopian far-right governance frameworks in modern history.

At its core, The Esther Project—named after the biblical Queen Esther, who is said to have saved the Jews from genocide in ancient Persia—is not merely a strategy to combat antisemitism. It functions as a call to criminalise opposition to Israel’s current war crimes in Gaza, curtail free expression, and dismantle basic civil liberties in the name of “national security.”

The report’s first main conclusion states that “the pro-Palestine movement in America, which is deeply hostile to Israel, Zionism, and the United States, is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN).”

Never mind that this so-called “HSN” does not exist. Nor do the so-called “Hamas Support Organisations” (HSOs) listed in the document—many of which include major American Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace.

The second core claim in the report asserts that this imaginary network is “funded by actors committed to the destruction of capitalism and democracy.” This is a paradoxical accusation, considering The Heritage Foundation itself is actively working to erode the democratic norms it claims to defend.

The phrase “capitalism and democracy” appears no fewer than five times in the report—despite the fact that Hamas, which governs a besieged and war-torn strip of land, has virtually nothing to do with capitalism. In fact, from a military-industrial perspective, genocide is capitalism at its most ruthless.

By this logic, The Esther Project declares that protesting genocide is antisemitism. It then justifies the implementation of its “national strategy” to root out what it calls the “Hamas Support Network” from American society.

A Blueprint for Political Repression

The report was released under President Joe Biden, whom the Foundation paradoxically labelled “clearly anti-Israel”—despite his administration’s unflinching support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The document offers dozens of proposals that would be triggered “once a cooperative administration is in the White House.” According to a recent New York Times analysis, over half of those proposals have already been enacted under Donald Trump’s current administration.

These include threats to strip universities of federal funding if they refuse to suppress pro-Palestinian speech, and attempts to deport lawful U.S. residents simply for expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

Universities are accused of being “infiltrated” by the alleged Hamas Support Network and of promoting “anti-Zionist rhetoric under liberal educational frameworks like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Marxist ideologies.”

The report also claims that this imaginary network has “mastered the liberal media landscape” and has become “exceptionally skilled at amplifying even the smallest protest” across mainstream media outlets.

Weaponising Antisemitism

The Heritage Foundation claims that platforms like TikTok have become tools for Hamas propaganda, and that the entire “digital environment” is being weaponised to spread “unregulated antisemitism.”

In response, The Esther Project recommends a sweeping set of authoritarian actions:

• • Purging educational institutions of any staff associated with pro-Palestinian activism

• • Instilling fear among protesters by linking dissent with terrorism

• • Banning so-called “antisemitic content” on social media—which, in Heritage’s lexicon, means any criticism of genocide or Israeli war crimes

Ironically, despite the fanfare surrounding the project, a December report by The Forward confirmed that no major Jewish organisation helped draft or publicly endorsed The Esther Project.

The publication noted that the plan appears to have been authored mainly by right-wing Evangelical groups, not Jewish communities. Its entire focus is on leftist critics of Israel, while completely ignoring the actual threats of antisemitism from white supremacist and far-right movements.

Conclusion: A Trojan Horse for Authoritarianism

Despite its name, The Esther Project has little to do with protecting Jews from hatred. It is a Trojan horse for Christian nationalist authoritarianism—weaponising the label of antisemitism to silence dissent, criminalise solidarity with Palestine, and execute an extremist domestic agenda.

Trump’s adoption of the plan, now unfolding in real time, marks not the beginning of justice, but the entrenchment of a new era of repression. And this, observers warn, may only be the beginning of something far more dangerous.