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Project Esther: Suppressing Palestinian Solidarity in the US

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14 min read

Summary

Tariq Kenney-Shawa’s Al-Shabaka policy brief argues that Project Esther, launched by the Heritage Foundation in October 2024 as a “national strategy to combat antisemitism”, is in practice the most brazen effort yet to suppress Palestinian advocacy in the US, reframing the whole Palestine solidarity movement as a “Hamas Support Network” so that its organizations can be dismantled through financial depletion, Lawfare and reputational damage, and serving as a test case and blueprint for broader crackdowns on dissent (Project Esther: Suppressing Palestinian Solidarity in the US, lines 141-147, 213-227). The brief situates the project in a decades-long bipartisan crackdown rooted in US antiterrorism law and in shifting public opinion — Gallup’s 2025 survey puts sympathy for Israel at 46%, below 50% for the first time — and argues the repression is a response to the Zionist movement’s failure to win the argument in the public sphere (lines 173, 183-191). Its recommendations are movement resilience and intersectional solidarity, reframing anti-Zionism as a human rights and public interest issue, anti-SLAPP legal defenses, and diversified grassroots funding (lines 149-159, 265-293).

What the file is

  • An Al-Shabaka policy brief (topic: Civil Society), published April 15, 2025, “19 min read”, downloaded from https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/project-esther-suppressing-palestinian-solidarity-in-the-us/ (access basis: NGO). The original is the HTML page; the text copy supplied with it (4,888 words, lines 1-466) is a plain-text rendering of that page, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers.
  • The text copy includes the site’s frame around the brief: navigation and featured items at lines 1-128 and 297-466, including items dated September 2026 that belong to the page as captured, not to the 2025 brief. The brief itself runs lines 129-295, followed by the author’s biography (lines 305-307).
  • Text quality: the brief’s prose is clean and complete in both copies. One loss: the Introduction carries a footnote marker 1 after “genocide in Gaza” (line 167), but no footnote text appears in either copy as supplied; the marker was also checked in the original HTML, where no recoverable note text is present in the supplied file. The page offers a “Download PDF” / “View PDF” link (lines 315, 325); no PDF was supplied. A French translation is noted at line 295, with Al-Shabaka disclaiming responsibility for any change in meaning.
  • The brief’s own title, author line and date are at lines 133-135; the original HTML metadata gives a publication timestamp of 2025-04-15, matching the displayed “Apr 15, 2025”, with a later modification timestamp of 2025-04-30 in the same metadata.

Section by section

  • Executive Summary (lines 139-163): the thesis and the five responses in brief — movement resilience and intersectional solidarity, reframing anti-Zionist advocacy as a human rights and public interest issue, legal defenses leveraging anti-SLAPP laws and preparing for criminalization under terrorism and foreign agent statutes, diversified and secured funding, and documenting and exposing repression (lines 149-159).
  • Introduction (lines 165-173): on October 7, 2024, marking one year since Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation, the conservative DC-based Heritage Foundation introduced Project Esther as its latest effort to crush Palestinian solidarity; framed as combating antisemitism, it exclusively targets voices and groups critical of the Israeli regime and calls for public-private collaboration employing censorship, intimidation and lawfare. The suppression long predates the genocide in Gaza; under Trump, who signed an executive order expanding crackdowns shortly after taking office for his second term, repression has escalated through revoking student visas, arresting and deporting activists, and increasing federal oversight of universities. The brief’s purpose is stated: situate Project Esther in the bipartisan crackdown, treat it as a litmus test for US democracy, and provide a roadmap for resisting.
  • Evolving Trends in Pro-Palestine Support (lines 175-191): pro-Israel narratives have gradually unraveled as independent news and social media gave Palestinians outlets and campus activism challenged the dominant narrative; BDS victories, from artists refusing to perform inside 1948 lands to Ben & Jerry’s attempting to halt sales in the occupied West Bank, signal the cultural shift. Polling as given: Gallup 2025, sympathy for Israel 46% (below 50% for the first time in polling history) and for Palestinians 33%, up from 25% in 2021; Gallup party figures, Democrats 59% for Palestinians against 21% for Israelis, Republicans 75% for Israelis against 10% for Palestinians; Pew Research Center, February 2024, Americans aged 18-29 at 33% for Palestinians against 14% for Israelis, against 47% of those aged 65 and older for Israelis; a recent CBS News poll, approximately 61% of Americans oppose additional US military aid to Israel. The shifts have yet to influence policy — since October 2023 Washington’s support has reached new heights — which is why, the brief argues, Israel’s supporters are resorting to authoritarian tactics.
  • A Crackdown Long in the Making (lines 193-203): the bipartisan legal genealogy. The first federal statute to reference “terrorism” appeared in the 1969 US Foreign Assistance Act, requiring UNRWA to ensure no US aid reached “any refugee receiving military training from a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army or engaged in any act of terrorism”, with no clear definition of terrorism; the resulting association of Palestinians with terrorism became an entrenched legal bias, carried through “material support” laws against FTOs, surveillance of Palestinian Americans, and legislation rooted in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and the PATRIOT Act of 2001. The IHRA definition of antisemitism, adopted by numerous institutions and government bodies, is presented as conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism while failing to acknowledge antisemitism’s roots in Western white supremacy. Anti-boycott legislation since 2014, with the Eighth Circuit’s 2022 upholding of the Arkansas contractor pledge as the example, closes the section.
  • Project Esther: Combating Dissent, Not Antisemitism (lines 205-239): since January 2025 Trump and his pro-Israel allies have intensified suppression, far-right Republican leaders wielding authoritarian tactics unapologetically where Democrats justify measures as combating antisemitism. Project Esther’s central pillar is reframing the movement as the “Hamas Support Network” and its organizations as “Hamas Support Organizations”: soft power tactics discredit, isolate and fracture the movement by falsely claiming links to or direction from Hamas, an FTO; hard power tactics threaten fundraising, legal operation and advocacy. The three warfare forms are Financial Depletion, targeting the pipelines sustaining Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace; Lawfare, using counterterrorism and anti-racketeering laws, strategic lawsuits and deportation of non-citizen activists; and Reputational Damage, McCarthy-era-style “research and investigation” into alleged “criminal wrongdoing”, with Canary Mission central to the “name-and-shame” campaign. The legal mechanisms the brief lists for expansion are the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, counterterrorism frameworks and immigration laws, each with its wider precedent for labor unions, climate activists, and Muslim, Black and Indigenous activism.
  • Using Fear as a Cudgel (lines 241-253): the name appropriates 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. A far-right Christian nationalist agenda, not Jewish safety, shapes the project: the Heritage Foundation reportedly struggled to secure Jewish organizations as official “partners”, and the World Jewish Congress and the Republican Jewish Coalition are among organizations that denied the direct role the Foundation insisted they played. The report downplays far-right antisemitism, makes no mention of addressing white supremacy, brands Democrats who have criticized Israel a so-called “Hamas Caucus” while omitting Republican critics Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, mentions not a single Republican, does not condemn Trump’s dual loyalty tropes, and fails to mention Marjorie Taylor Greene, who voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (H.R. 6090) claiming it contradicted the “gospel”.
  • A Direct Assault on Democracy (lines 255-263): Project Esther as an extension of Project 2025, the comprehensive far-right agenda Trump distanced himself from during his reelection campaign and then implemented, in the brief’s word, in a blitzkrieg series of executive orders; a reactionary attempt to preserve the status quo and reclaim the narratives justifying unconditional US support for Israel, against shifts that are themselves outcomes of the democratic process.
  • Recommendations (lines 265-293): Building Movement Resilience and Intersectional Solidarity (shared platforms, alliances with environmental, Indigenous and racial justice movements, framing Project Esther as a First Amendment attack on all Americans); Winning the Information War (reframe anti-Zionism as a human rights and public interest issue, expose right-wing cooptation of antisemitism discourse, document and expose repression); Strengthening Legal Defenses and Bolstering Funding (leverage anti-SLAPP laws, expand and diversify grassroots funding through small donors and international supporters).
  • Author biography (lines 305-307): Kenney-Shawa is Al-Shabaka’s Associate Fellow, based in New York, co-host of its Policy Lab series, with a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University; his writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy and The Nation, and he serves as Associate Director of Editorial for the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Key passages

  • “Project Esther, launched by the Heritage Foundation in October 2024, represents the most brazen effort yet to suppress Palestinian advocacy in the US under the guise of combating antisemitism.” (line 141)
  • “Project Esther falsely reframes pro-Palestine organizations as part of a “Hamas Support Network,” weaponizing legal and financial tools to criminalize advocacy.” (line 145)
  • “any refugee receiving military training from a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army or engaged in any act of terrorism” (line 195, quoting the 1969 US Foreign Assistance Act as the brief presents it)
  • “research and investigation” (line 225, Project Esther’s strategy wording as quoted in the brief)
  • “criminal wrongdoing” (line 225, the alleged wrongdoing the brief says that research aims to uncover)
  • “It has nothing to do with combating antisemitism.” (line 251, closing sentence of the report-omissions paragraph)

Evidence the work relies on

  • The brief is an advocacy policy brief, not a research report: its evidence is presented in the running text, largely through hyperlinks in the original HTML (the text copy retains the linked phrases but not the URLs or a notes list), and one footnote marker (line 167) whose text is not in the supplied copies.
  • Polling as given, with the brief’s dates: Gallup’s 2025 survey (sympathy for Israel 46%, for Palestinians 33% in 2025 against 25% in 2021; Democrats 59% / 21%, Republicans 75% / 10%) (lines 183-185); Pew Research Center’s February 2024 survey (ages 18-29, 33% / 14%; ages 65 and older, 47% for Israelis) (line 187); a recent CBS News poll (approximately 61% oppose additional US military aid to Israel) (line 189).
  • Statutes and legal instruments as the brief presents them: the 1969 US Foreign Assistance Act’s UNRWA provision (line 195); the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and the PATRIOT Act of 2001 (line 199); the IHRA definition of antisemitism (line 201); anti-boycott laws since 2014 and the Eighth Circuit’s 2022 Arkansas ruling (line 203); FARA, RICO, counterterrorism frameworks and immigration laws as the mechanisms Project Esther would expand (lines 231-237); the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (H.R. 6090) and Greene’s vote against it (line 251).
  • Project Esther’s own report as the brief characterizes it: its self-presentation as a “national strategy to combat antisemitism” (line 209), its “Hamas Support Network” / “Hamas Support Organizations” labels (line 213), its “Hamas Caucus” branding of Democrats (line 249), and its omissions — no Republican mentioned, no condemnation of Trump’s dual loyalty tropes, no mention of Greene (line 251).
  • Reported facts as the brief states them, without a named source in the text copy: the Heritage Foundation reportedly struggled to secure Jewish organization partners, and the World Jewish Congress and Republican Jewish Coalition denied the direct role claimed for them (line 245).

Analysis

  • Method: a policy brief that builds its case from a public-opinion trend section (three polling organizations’ figures), a legal genealogy of US antiterrorism and anti-boycott law from 1969 to 2022, and a close characterization of Project Esther’s own framing and named mechanisms, then moves to recommendations. Its claims about Project Esther’s intent — that combating antisemitism is not its goal — are argued from the project’s own report as the brief presents it (its labels, its partisan lists and its omissions); in the supplied copy the supporting hyperlinks are not resolvable to their targets and the one footnote is missing, so those attributions rest on the brief’s own authority as presented here.
  • Perspective: the brief is written from within the Palestine solidarity movement, by Al-Shabaka’s Associate Fellow, and says so openly in its terms — “the Israeli regime”, “Zionists and their allies”, “the genocide in Gaza” — which are kept as its own terms on this page. Its distinctive move, as in the author’s 2022 brief, is widening: Project Esther matters most as a template, because the FARA, RICO, counterterrorism and immigration mechanisms it would expand against Palestine advocacy are the same mechanisms the brief says have long targeted marginalized communities and could be turned on labor, climate and other movements.
  • Limits, on the brief’s own text: the polling figures are given without sample or question wording; the partner-denial claim is reported (“reportedly”) without a named source in the text copy; and several characterizations of Project Esther’s report are the brief’s readings of that report, which is not itself a source in this wiki.

People, organizations, places and events

Concepts

How it relates to other sources

  • With Challenging Anti-Boycott Legislation in the US: the same author’s earlier Al-Shabaka brief supplies the anti-boycott layer this brief builds on — the 2022 brief’s state-law campaign and Eighth Circuit Arkansas ruling reappear here in one paragraph (line 203) as one facet of the longer crackdown, while the 2025 brief’s centre is the federal-level Project Esther and the antiterrorism-law genealogy behind it. Both briefs make the same widening move: the machinery built against Palestine advocacy is a template for wider assaults on constitutional rights.
  • With Written Testimony of Kenneth S. Stern (2025) and Written Testimony of Kenneth S. Stern (2017): Stern likewise argues that the IHRA definition’s campus use settles the anti-Zionism / antisemitism question by definition and endangers speech, and his 2025 testimony also records Greene’s objection to the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 on the Gospel ground (see Marjorie Taylor Greene); Kenney-Shawa’s brief treats the IHRA definition as one legal tool among several in a bipartisan crackdown, and Greene’s omission from Project Esther’s report as evidence of the project’s partisanship.
  • With Palestine: A Socialist Introduction: its Chapter 7 likewise treats anti-BDS legislation as Israel’s Lawfare in the US; this brief extends that frame from state anti-boycott laws to a named national strategy proposing FARA, RICO and counterterrorism prosecutions of solidarity organizations as a “Hamas Support Network”.

Open questions

  • The footnote marked 1 at line 167 has no text in either supplied copy, and no recoverable note text was found in the original HTML as supplied; what it cited for the sentence ending “did not begin with the genocide in Gaza” cannot be recovered from these files.
  • Project Esther’s own report is characterized throughout but is not itself ingested; its exact partner list, its full Democrat list under the “Hamas Caucus” label, and its wording beyond the phrases quoted here (“national strategy to combat antisemitism”, “Hamas Support Network”, “Hamas Support Organizations”, “research and investigation”, “criminal wrongdoing”) cannot be checked from this source.
  • The brief’s CBS News poll is described only as “recent” (line 189), with no date given in the text.
  • Whether the World Jewish Congress and Republican Jewish Coalition denials, reported at line 245 without a named source in the text copy, were of partner status, of a direct role in creation, or both, is stated two ways in the same paragraph: the Foundation “struggled to secure Jewish organizations as official “partners.”” and the named organizations denied the claim that they played a direct role in the initiative’s creation. Both forms are recorded; neither is resolved here.

Coverage

lines 1-466 of 466, read in full.

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