Summary
The Heritage Foundation initiative launched on October 7, 2024 and presented as a “national strategy to combat antisemitism”, which Kenney-Shawa’s brief argues is in practice a systematic campaign of intimidation, defunding and criminalization aimed at dismantling the pro-Palestine solidarity movement in the US (Project Esther: Suppressing Palestinian Solidarity in the US, lines 167, 209).
Details
- Its central pillar, in the brief’s account, is reframing the entire Palestine solidarity movement as the “Hamas Support Network” and its constituent organizations as “Hamas Support Organizations”, casting any group advocating for Palestinian rights as aligned with Hamas (line 213). Soft power tactics use that claim to discredit, isolate and fracture the movement; hard power tactics threaten the organizations’ fundraising, legal operation and advocacy (lines 215-217).
- Its three warfare forms, as the brief gives them: Financial Depletion of groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, by pressuring donor foundations and academic institutions to withdraw funding; Lawfare through counterterrorism and anti-racketeering laws, strategic lawsuits and deportation of non-citizen activists; and Reputational Damage through “research and investigation” into alleged “criminal wrongdoing”, with Canary Mission central to the “name-and-shame” campaign (lines 221-225).
- The legal mechanisms it advocates expanding, in the brief’s account: the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, counterterrorism frameworks and immigration laws (lines 231-237).
- Its name: its founders named it after the biblical figure Esther, celebrated in Jewish tradition for saving her people from genocide in ancient Persia, to draw a moral parallel between historical Jewish survival and modern Zionist agendas (line 243).
- Its report, as the brief characterizes it: it lists nearly every Democrat who has voiced even slight criticism of Israel as part of a so-called “Hamas Caucus”, omits Republican critics Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, mentions not a single Republican, does not condemn Donald Trump’s dual loyalty tropes, and fails to mention Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vote against the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (lines 249-251). It explicitly downplays the dangers of far-right antisemitism and makes no mention of addressing white supremacy (line 249).
- It emerges, in the brief’s account, as an extension of Project 2025 (line 257).
Related pages
Project Esther: Suppressing Palestinian Solidarity in the US, Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, Antisemitism, Lawfare