The group behind Project 2025 has a new plan to fight antisemitism

The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project Esther’ was drafted by a coalition made up largely of evangelical Christian organizations

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, developed both Project 2025 and Project Esther, which is meant to address antisemitism in the United States by cracking down on a so-called “Hamas Support Network” of anti-Zionist organizations and liberal foundations. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld October 15, 2024

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The organization behind Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for a second Trump administration, just released a plan to counter antisemitism. It’s called Project Esther, and, in short, suggests the federal government train its sights on “virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American groups” that it calls the “Hamas Support Network,” or HSN, and compares to the German-American Bund that supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The plan calls for using counterterrorism and immigration laws against leaders of this alleged network — which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine — as well as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act that was used to bring down the mafia.

This dragnet would also target major progressive foundations like Tides and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which fund a handful of pro-Palestinian organizations as well as many other liberal causes.

Project Esther is full of grandiose language light on many specifics, but it’s worth paying attention to because of its authors. It was published by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which also wrote Project 2025. The think tank has helped shape the policies of Republican presidents for decades and is now focused on “institutionalizing Trumpism.” And its antisemitism plan was drafted by a coalition that includes the America First Policy Institute, which is often referred to as a “White House in waiting.”

(Ironically, “America First” was a slogan favored by some of the pre-World War II Nazi sympathizers that Project Esther condemns.)

This means that there’s a good chance that much of what’s in the 33-page Project Esther document could become federal policy if former President Donald Trump wins in November.

For that same reason, it’s also worth noting who was not part of writing the plan: Jewish organizations. Heritage told Jewish Insider that 57 organizations, including the World Jewish Congress and Republican Jewish Coalition, helped create the document, but those organizations and others told the publication they played no part in the process.

In fact, Project Esther accuses “America’s Jewish community” of “complacency” and says some elements are “blind and deaf” to the menace posed by the “Hamas Support Network.”

“They haven’t sufficiently focused on the core of the problem,” James Carafano, who helps run Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, said in the Insider article. As for why Project Esther ignores the threat of right-wing antisemites including white supremacists, he said: “White supremacists are not my problem because white supremacists are not part of being conservative.”

Only one Jewish group, the ultra-conservative Coalition for Jewish Values, is publicly listed as a member of Heritage’s task force. Six Evangelical Christian organizations are among the 12 groups that founded the task force in November.

Part of the reason for this may have been revealed by another policy paper on antisemitism released Monday by the America First Policy Institute, which claimed that “woke antisemites won’t stop with Jewish students.”

“Christians are certainly the larger target,” wrote Christopher Schorr, a policy analyst for the group.

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Arno Rosenfeld is enterprise reporter at the Forward, where he covers antisemitism, philanthropy, sexual misconduct and American Jewish politics. You can reach him at arno@forward.com and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.

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