Egypt Daily News – President Donald Trump’s statements to pro-Palestinian students, “We will find you and expel you”, were not just passing words, and the arrests and deportations were not improvised actions. Rather, they are part of a strategic and well-planned initiative that predates his rise to power. “Esther”.
The New York Times published a report revealing that the Heritage Foundation sent a delegation to Israel in late April to hold meetings with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, with the aim of discussing the “Esther Project.”
It described Esther’s goal as “branding a broad range of critics of Israel as ‘effectively a terrorist support network,’ so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered ‘open society.'” It highlighted attempts to remove curriculum viewed as “Hamas support” from schools and universities, remove “supporting faculty”, purging social media of alleged antisemitic content, defunding institutions of public funding, and revoking visas and deporting those who engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The project consists of a series of steps aimed at “combating antisemitism” within the United States. However, it is notable that it classifies pro-Palestinian movements within the U.S. as part of the “Global Hamas Support Network” (HSN), which is said to seek to:
- Undermine Washington’s support for Israel
- Exploit American media to spread its ideas
- Influence the federal government
- Take advantage of lax attitudes within the American Jewish community
The project lays out measures to confront these movements by expelling, excluding, and canceling anyone who supports the pro-Palestinian cause, including students, professors, and social media influencers, as well as cutting funding to institutions that support them.
Project background
The project was formulated following Hamas’s attack on October 7, just before the U.S. elections and amid growing anti-Israel protests on American campuses. It was named after the Jewish queen “Esther,” wife of the Persian king Xerxes I during the Achaemenid era, a biblical figure known for saving the Jews. According to the newspaper, Trump adopted the project without formally announcing it. More than half of its policies reportedly went into effect within less than four months of his assuming office. The newspaper interviewed those involved in the project to support these claims.
Despite officials at the Heritage Foundation denying direct involvement in implementing the document inside the White House, the foundation’s Director of National Security — one of the project’s authors — stated that what is happening “cannot be a coincidence.”
Notably, the administration launched a large-scale arrest campaign targeting pro-Palestinian students such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, along with decisions to cut funding to Harvard University for not complying with the administration’s requests.
Since late March, U.S. authorities have canceled visas or terminated the legal status of over 1,000 university students across the country, according to a review conducted by the Associated Press.
Belén Fernández, an American writer and journalist and author of the book Exile: Rejecting America and Discovering the World , criticized the “Esther Project,” saying that its advocates claim to be protecting the country from those destroying democracy, but in reality, “they are the ones destroying it.”
She pointed out that the project contains several fallacies, including an unclear link between Hamas and capitalism, and that it criminalizes the right to protest what she described as “the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza,” considering it a form of antisemitism.
Anyone thinking of going to the USA where he can enjoy freedom of expression and say anything, knowing that he’s protected by the First amendment of the US constitution, needs to think again. Today in the USA, you can criticize the government, the President and anything you don’t agree with, however say one word against Israel even if it’s true, you will be fired, sued, expelled or deported, which in all fairness, is anti-American.
