Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently took Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident with a green card, into custody for leading “activities aligned to Hamas.” Khalil, a former Columbia student appears to be the first high-profile target of the Trump administration; an example of how closely the administration is following the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther playbook. According to Politico’s Irie Sentner, “Khalil was a lead negotiator representing the student protesters to the Columbia administration during the school’s ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ last spring (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/13/columbia-student-journalist-mahmoud-khalil-00226729).
Project Esther, the Heritage Foundation’s project ostensibly designed to combat anti-Semitism, is a thinly veiled attack on liberal American Jews, college campus protests, and supporters of a Palestinian state. Project Esther was unveiled on October 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ murderous rampage.
What exactly is the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther? How will it impact free speech and the right to protest in the United States? Will it do anything to combat anti-Semitism?
Project Esther is a roadmap for the Trump administration to launch witch-hunts against individuals and institutions with progressive politics, strip money from colleges and universities, and label any demonstrations supporting a Palestinian state as anti-Semitic.
At the same time, it turns a blind eye to the anti-Semitic activities of Trump’s Neo-Nazi and white supremacist supporters.
Project Esther (https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism) declares:
“America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American ‘pro-Palestinian movement’ is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN) that is trying to compel the U.S. government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel. Supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency. The National Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism intends to enlist all willing and able partners in a coordinated effort to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism in the United States.”
Project Esther is “a public-private plan for dismantling any domestic group that supports Palestinian rights — which it calls the ‘Hamas Support Network,” The Forward’s Dove Kent reported. “The plan’s first targets are pro-Palestinian organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. But that’s just the start.”
Heritage’s Project Esther “has its sights on what it describes as a much broader ‘coalition of leftist, progressive organizations such as Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation and numerous others.’ It calls for using tools including anti-terrorism and anti-racketeering criminal prosecution; deportations; public firings; removal of tax-exempt status; blocking of funding; and campaigns to sow discord within movements to “disrupt and degrade” these organizations” (https://forward.com/opinion/676036/antisemitism-heritage-foundation-project-esther/?amp=1).
Kent noted that Project Esther’s “plan against anti-Semitism has virtually no Jewish authors, as is evident from interviews with the Heritage Foundation, the plan’s use of uncommon phrases like ‘Reformed Judaism,’ and its erroneous references to Jewish text. (Its first sentence incorrectly locates the Book of Esther in the Torah).”
Project Esther “has engaged far-right fringes of the institutional American Jewish landscape,” Religion Dispatches’ Ben Lorber reported in late October. “[it]appears to be led entirely by Christian nationalists. At the helm of the National Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism are Mario Bramnick and Luke Moon, among the most influential movement builders of the Christian Zionist Right.” (https://religiondispatches.org/heritage-foundations-christian-nationalist-project-esther-wont-combat-antisemitism-but-it-will-weaponize-jews/).
“The strategy is named after the biblical Jewish queen [and] offers insights into the persecution those who oppose Zionism and white-supremacy will likely face in Trump’s America,” Yoav Litvin, an Israeli-American doctor of psychology/neuroscience, a writer and photographer, recently wrote in Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2024/11/15/project-esther-a-trumpian-blueprint-to-crush-anticolonial-resistance).
According to Litvin, Project Esther was “Created by the same minds that brought us the authoritarian, Christian nationalist Project 2025.” Project Esther “syncretizes the story of Queen Esther, the Jewish heroine celebrated during Purim for saving Jews of ancient Persia from extermination at the hands of Vizier Haman, with modern day Zionist narratives of defense and victimhood to depict her as a defender of Jews against activists, academics and progressive members of Congress in the US who oppose racism, apartheid and genocide.”
Many biblical scholars believe that the story of Esther is apocryphal, or at best allegorical (https://bibleodyssey.com/articles/esther/).
While billed as a project to combat anti-Semitism and the “Hamas Support Network” — a catch-all phrase to describe anyone critical of Israel’s activities — the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther is aimed at destroying the left in the U.S. At its heart, Project Esther represents an unbridled attack on the first amendment, academic freedom and free speech. Its McCarthyist tactics are eerily redolent of America’s right wing’s historical love affairs with Red Scares and witch-hunts.
