Heritage Foundation’s Christian Nationalist ‘Project Esther’ Won’t Combat Antisemitism — But it Will Weaponize Jews | Religion Dispatches

“On the anniversary of October 7, the Heritage Foundation released Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. The 33-page document calls on the federal government to use counterterrorism, immigration, surveillance, intelligence gathering and other apparatuses to “disrupt and degrade” Palestinian rights organizations and a range of progressive funding infrastructure.

Spearheaded by Heritage’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, Project Esther is lengthy, rambling, and “full of grandiose language light on many specifics,” as Forward reporter Arno Rosenfeld put it, which was perhaps because the writing process was “not terribly iterative,” one anonymous conservative critic told Jewish Insider. But we can assume its authors mean business. The Heritage Foundation also brought us Project 2025, while the America First Policy Institute (one of the Task Force’s 12 organizations), described by Politico as a “White House in waiting,” is composed of former Trump advisors eager to staff the next administration…

…In the end, Project Esther is merely the latest in a tired trend of Christian nationalists using Jews as a fig leaf for their authoritarian, illiberal agenda. Unsurprisingly, their agenda doesn’t bode well for  Palestinians, social movements, or anyone else in our multiracial democracy—including Jews.”

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