Project Esther and the weaponisation of Zionism

On October 7, 2024 – exactly one year into the United States-backed Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip that has now killed more than 53,000 Palestinians – the Washington-based Heritage Foundation unleashed a policy paper titled Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. The “national strategy” proposed by Project Esther – which is named for the biblical queen credited with saving the Jews from extermination in ancient Persia – basically consists of criminalising opposition to Israel’s current genocide and exterminating freedoms of speech and thought along with a whole lot of other rights. And as per the genocidal logic of Project Esther, protesting the mass slaughter of Palestinians is fundamentally anti-Semitic – hence the need to pursue the prescribed national strategy of “extirpating the influence of the HSN from our society”. The October publication of the Heritage Foundation report occurred on the watch of President Joe Biden’s administration, which the think tank diagnosed as “decidedly anti-Israel” despite its complete and utter complicity in the genocide in Gaza. Now, if the Trump administration seems to be taking Project Esther and running with it, it is more out of concern for propagating a white Christian nationalist agenda that utilises Zionism and anti-Semitism charges to its own extremist ends.