Report: Trump Plans UK-Style Attack on Israel Criticism
Joe Lauria says the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther,” as covered by Drop Site News, replicates the U.K.’s use of a terrorism law to criminalize pro-Palestine speech and activism.
Former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona, on Aug. 23. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
A second Trump administration could criminalize criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as support for terrorism, along the lines of the British Terrorism Act, according to a report in Drop Site News.
The report says the plan is to “break the pro-Palestinian movement in the U.S.”
“The plan, dubbed ‘Project Esther,‘ casts pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. as members of a global conspiracy aligned with designated terrorist organizations. As part of a so-called ‘Hamas Support Network,’ these protesters receive ‘indispensable support of a vast network of activists and funders with a much more ambitious, insidious goal — the destruction of capitalism and democracy,’ Project Esther’s authors allege.
This conspiratorial framing is part of a legal strategy to suppress speech favorable to Palestinians or critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship, by employing counterterrorism laws to suppress what would otherwise be protected speech, legal experts told Drop Site News.”
The authors of the plan are part of the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Drop Site says. Former President Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025 but he is a strong supporter of Israel, having moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and accepted Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, considered illegal by the U.N. Security Council.
The Washington Post reported in May that Trump told donors in New York that he would deport foreign students if they demonstrate for Palestine. “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump told the donors, the Post reported.
The report in Drop Site News, written by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain, quotes an attorney at Palestine Legal as saying that
“concepts like the ‘Hamas Support Network’ or ‘Hamas Supporting Organizations,’ another term that the authors use to describe pro-Palestinian activist groups, is intended to construct a narrative justifying the use of counterterrorism and sanctions laws to suppress the First Amendment rights of individuals involved in the pro-Palestine movement …”
‘They need to make a claim that these organizations are being directed and controlled by Hamas, which they’re not,’ attorney Dylan Saba said. ‘So their claim now is that these organizations are effectively serving as a propaganda wing for designated terrorist organizations.’”
This is precisely what the British government has been doing.
2000 Terrorism Act
Using the 2000 Terrorism Act, authorities have been stopping journalists and activists at border entry points to interrogate them, sometimes arresting them, or conducting raids on their homes all because they dare expose and condemn Israel’s ongoing barbarism in Gaza and now Lebanon and misconstrue it as support for proscribed organizations, namely Hamas and Hezbollah.
Among those interrogated under the Terrorism Act for this purpose have been Craig Murray, writer, former British diplomat, new Consortium News board member; journalist Richard Medhurst who was held in a cell for 24 hours; and Asa Winstanley, an editor at Electronic Intifada whose home was raided by counterterrorism police.
[See: Police Escalate Britain’s War on Independent Journalism]
If Trump wins we could expect the same thing as is happening in the U.K. from his second administration, according to Drop Site News.
Heritage Foundation headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
“To achieve its goals, Project Esther proposes the use of counterterrorism and hate speech laws, as well as immigration measures, including the deportation of students and other individuals,” Drop Site News reported.
The draconian measures being planned also include using racketeering laws “to help construct prosecutions against individuals and organizations in the movement,” the site reported.
[Related: Georgia Frames Cop-City Protest as Criminal Conspiracy]
The project would first attempt to purge “propaganda” from schools, then intimidate students not to take part in protests. This process is expected to lead to a point where “both the U.S. public and a preponderance of Jewish community perceives HSOs” — short for Hamas Support Organizations — “as a threat to their safety.”
Their aim is to crush the anti-genocide movement within 12 to 24 months.
As with most things in the duopoly, the Biden administration has given Trump a head start by designating a Palestinian prisoner support group named Samidoun a terrorist organization, the site says.
Israel has been accusing any critic of being pro-Hamas, such as how they smeared U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Or they accuse you of being part of Hamas. What is even more disturbing is that Western governments have taken up these ludicrous claims to ensure Israel remains above criticism while it openly commits genocide.
It is one of the most transparent tricks going back millennia for a government to smear its legitimate critics as being card-carrying members of its most ardent enemies — and Western governments are willfully falling for it, criminalizing journalists who oppose the slaughter.
If Trump wins and follows through with this plan he will be totally abrogating the First Amendment, which is supposed to separate the U.S. from the country it rebelled against a long time ago.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.