The Heritage Foundation is best known as the people who brought us Project 2025. Remember, that was the blueprint for a second Trump Administration which Trump denied he ever heard of and then implemented.
About the same time as Project 2025 was published, The Heritage Foundation produced another blueprint—Project Esther.
The paper is named after the biblical heroine who saved her people in ancient Persia. Its avowed purpose is “A National Strategy to Combat Anti-Semitism.” Its real purpose is to use the veneer of Jewish protection to introduce extraordinary governmental and legal manoeuvres to stifle left-wing dissent.
Like most Trumpian projects, fear is a central element. In the case of Project Esther it is fear of all things Palestinian and anything opposed to the government of Israel. The authors of Project Esther call the object of fear the “Hamas Support Network” (HSN).
In Project Esther’s playbook, HSN encompasses a broad swathe of organisations, student groups, and individual activists. Any far‑left, anticolonial and anti‑Zionist movements is dubbed the moral equivalent of terrorism. It then goes on to say that because these organisations—that as anyone critical of Israel—are terrorists that they are an organised danger to American society as well as Jewish society.
The next step, according to Project Esther, is to use governmental instruments originally used to combat organised crime to pursue the alleged anti-Semites. The Heritage Foundation proposed using anti-racketeer statues (RICO) and the Foreign Agents Registration Act alongside counter-terrorism laws to prosecute individuals and groups aligned with, or sympathetic to, Palestinian rights.
Universities are key battlegrounds. Project Esther calls for the identification and purging of pro‑Palestinian faculty, pressure on administrations through funding threats, and the surveillance of student protestors. It encourages public firings and invites cutting off visa status or revoking student visas for non‑citizens participating in such activism.
Surveillance and data gathering is a big part of the envisioned infrastructure. Heritage proposes a vertically integrated apparatus linking private security firms, campus police, federal agencies and universities—with techniques including facial recognition, data mining and social media scraping to monitor affinity networks and anticipate dissent before it flourish.
Importantly, the project is rooted in Christian nationalist and evangelical Zionist networks. There is minimal participation from Jewish organisations. In fact, major Jewish groups declined involvement in discussions surrounding Project Esther. They are reportedly uncomfortable with Esther’s selective focus on left-wing anti-Semitism while neglecting the far-right, which they view as the true anti-Semitic threat.
The Heritage Foundation even identifies prominent Jewish figures—such as George Soros and J.B. Pritzker—as anti-Semitic political masterminds behind the pro-Palestinian movement.
Project Esther envisions rapid implementation under a “willing” administration, promising rapid implementation within 12–24 months of electoral success. More than half of Project Esther’s recommendations have already been applied by the second Trump administration. The White House has threatened to revoke university funding, deport student protesters and demanded enhanced campus surveillance and insisted on changes to curriculum and staffing—all in the name of the battle against anti-Semitism.
Many Jewish groups warn Project Esther battle against anti-Semitism will—through its association with the heavy-handed actions of the Trump Administration—only increase anti-Semitism.
But then, Project Esther’s real purpose is not to combat anti-Semitism. It is to use prejudice against Jews and Israel to undermine liberalism attack anyone opposed to the Trump Administration’s basic policies.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
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17 Comments
Three major US university presidents resigned for a total failing to address blatant antisemitism on campus . This followed millions of dollars in damage to university faculties carried out by pro Palestinian protests and encampments. Most of this while Biden was residing in the Whitehouse.
Many leading US universities are in receipt of considerable sums of US dollar taxpayers money – the least they should accept is that students conduct themselves in a lawful civilised manner.
Greg: student activism has a long history – and you over-emphasise the costs and damage caused by protests and encampments (I was at Cornell when anti-Vietnam protests got mixed up with clashes over civil rights campaigns – far more dangerous and damaging). Tom Arms is right that this is an attack on universities as ‘systematically left-wing’, using accusations of anti-Semitism as the lever. Jewish faculty at Harvard include its current President, standing up to Trump. I met last year’s president of Harvard Hillel (the Jewish student society) 2 weeks ago, who also explained to me the many different strands of current right-wing attacks on US universities.
Some of the faculties at Columbia were trashed – millions in damages. Many Jewish students have had to endure anti-Semitic graviti and chanting, & many videos have shown them being blocked from accessing university grounds. Those three presidents who resigned after their woefully inadequate testimony to the Senate. This isn’t 1969 where conscription was taken place. Taxpayers – many of whom have never had the luxury of a university education – would expect that students protesting should respect property and other students wishes who’ve no interest in Palestine
Greg: I don’t accept your characterization of the grilling of these three presidents by a hostile Republican majority in a Senate committee. And you clearly reject Tom Arms’ well-informed analysis of the motivations behind this attack on major US universities as liberal institutions committed to reasoned (even if sometimes heated) debate. The chage of anti-semitism is being used as a lever; it is not the underlying motivation.
How do the damage done in American Universities and damage done in Gaza and the West Bank compare in magnitude and financial and emotional costs?
Ditto problems faced by American students and students in the Gaza and the West Bank?
@Steve; What on Earth is the relevance of that question? If you are protesting against something in a democracy, it’s simply not acceptable during your protest to deliberately damage property or harm or intimidate anyone AT ALL. There is no rule that says it’s fine to hurt people or damage property, as long as it’s less damage than the thing you’re protesting about!
Israel and its supporters including some notable Jewish bodies have chosen to align themselves with the far right of politics which is the home of real, historic anti-semitism. By trying to defend the current genocide and Israels long standing apartheid state by throwing accusations of anti-semitism, they have deeply alienated the kinds of liberals who would have defended them from real antisemitism. The far right will turn on them.
Crying wolf does not-end well
Those university presidents were earning millions of dollars a year. If they can’t handle tough questioning from the likes of Stefanik then maybe there in the wrong job. They presided over rising anti-Semitism on campus and failed to confront protesting students guilty of harassing fellow students. In Columbia’s case the university encampments and barricades amounted to sustained vandalism costing millions while hugely impacting fellow students studies who wanted no part in those protests. Those presidents resigned through their own abject failings.
Might the book “Weaponising Anti-Semitism” by Asa Winstanley be relevant?
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/weaponising-antisemitism-a-review/
“{Israel and its supporters} have deeply alienated the kinds of liberals who would have defended them from real antisemitism. The far right will turn on them.”
Good Point. Others further to the left of liberals too.
I don’t know if the far right will turn on them. They seem to have shifted from being anti-Jewish to anti-Islam. I’d still defend them if that were to happen but it would be more difficult. There is a side of me that wouldn’t be at all enthusiastic.
Greg. Like so many you try to claim that being against the policies and actions of the Netanyahu government is anti semitic. You dismiss the very real problems of Palestine and those who oppose the destruction and starvation of the Palestinians as anti semitic. You really have to learn to distinguish between anti semitic and anti the government Israel. I say this as the son of a Holocaust survivor, before you accuse me of anti semitism.
I may be being pedantic but the term ‘semitic’ applies to various peoples from the Middle East including the Palestinians. It is not a synonym for Jewish people.
Secondly, Greg refers three times to vandalism costing millions of dollars. That sounds a lot to me. Can he provide a reliable independent source for that number?
I agree with Mick……… and I’d gently suggest it’s time for Ed Davey to have his Campbell Bannerman “methods of barbarism” speech.
@Greg Hyde 3rd Aug ’25 – 6:52am
You produce a very one sided commentary on the Campus protests..
Columbia University was the first to see the protests when students set up a ‘Gaza Peace Camp’ in the Campus grounds. on April 17, 2024.. The very next day, April 18Th (hardly a lengthy disruption) the university president called in the New York City Police Department who used heavy handed tactics to trash the camp and make mass arrests. This incident, the first in over 50 years, led to some future protests taking over buildings and using barricades to keep out police and National guards….
As for ‘antisemitic slogans, I saw many pro Palestinian and anti-Israel placards and graffiti but I saw NO antisemitic ones although supporters of Israel and some students said that the word “intifada” and the phrase “from the river to the sea”, were antisemitic..
You also neglect to report on the violent counter, pro-Israel protests especially in UCLA and Penn. State where armed pro-Israel groups attacked student protestors and called for a “Second Nakba”,..
And, regarding costs, I saw graffiti, furniture used as barricades, a few broken windows and one report of computers being vandalised, but hardly $millions..
I’m with Mick, Robin and David on this.
We are all being forced to be silent witnesses every day to a war crime; the atrocity of imposed mass starvation and unlawful killing of Palestinian civilians, being shot, at almost point blank range by the Israeli army whilst desperately seeking food, water and medical help on their own Palestinian land.
For all the background noise, chaos, hand-wringing and political wrangling, there are just two men principally responsible in my view; Netanyahu and Trump, and they are the only two who can stop it.
Its time to name and shame them and lay the more than 50,000 Palestinian civilian deaths at their door.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Our actions should be based on love and compassion. We all make mistakes and forgiveness is to be applauded. Actions are what seems sensible given the perpetrators viewpoint.
Does anyone think that maybe the protests are for the lives of human beings? The Palestinians are humans, not matter the religion, color etc. Please just look at this for what it is- Ethnic Cleansing. I do not want my tax dollars going to killing and starving human beings. Period!