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Gaza, Palestine, is the modern Warsaw, Poland.
The so-called modern civilized world is showing itself to be as uncivilized as any corrupt, authoritarian society in world history. And the United States of America and Israel are leading the pack. There are no nations on the planet today that are showing themselves more bloodthirsty, more calloused to the mass murder of innocents and more guilty of international war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity than these two countries.
I think it is more than coincidental that over 80% of Israelis support Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza and over 80% of evangelicals in America do the same.
Both Judaic Zionism and Christian Zionism are eaten up with the spirit of religious bigotry, racial supremacy, hatred, war and death.
And the people who keep defending and excusing Donald Trump’s refusal to stop the genocide in Gaza—which he could have done his first week in office by cutting off the supply of the instruments of war enabling Israel’s genocide—are showing themselves to be of the same evil, wicked heart as the people in Israel who are defending and excusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloodlust.
But Trump is doing much more than enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza; he is leading the effort to remove or silence all dissenting voices in America.
From Al Jazeera:
What is Project Esther, the playbook against pro-Palestine movement in US?
Advocates say Trump administration appears to be following Project Esther’s recommendations to crackdown on activism.
When the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank in the United States, released a playbook last year for how to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement, it did not garner much attention.
But more than eight months later, the policy document – known as Project Esther – now faces heightened scrutiny from activists and media outlets, in part because President Donald Trump appears to be following its blueprint.
The authors of Project Esther have presented their report as a set of recommendations for combating anti-Semitism, but critics say the document’s ultimate aim is to “poison” groups critical of Israel by painting them as Hamas associates.
Project Esther was created as a response to growing protests against the US support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which United Nations experts and rights groups have described as a genocide.
So, what is Project Esther, and how is it being applied against activists? Here is a look at the document and its ongoing implications for the US.
What is the Heritage Foundation?
The Heritage Foundation is an influential conservative think tank in Washington, DC, whose stated mission is to “formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense”.
Yet, critics argue that Project Esther calls for government interference to curb individual freedoms, including the rights to free speech and association when it comes to opposing Israeli government policies.
The Heritage Foundation is also behind Project 2025, which critics describe as an authoritarian playbook for the second Trump presidency.
What is the ‘Hamas Support Network’, according to Project Esther?
The authors claim that groups engaged in advocacy for Palestinian rights are members of the Hamas Support Network (HSN).
In short, the document alleges that the “pro-Palestinian movement” is “effectively a terrorist support network”.
Does the ‘Hamas Support Network’ exist?
No.
There is no such network in the US, which has stern laws against providing material support to groups designated as “terrorist organisations”, including Hamas.
Beth Miller – the political director at Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group that the Heritage Foundation names as part of the network – called Project Esther’s allegations “outlandish”.
“It exposes the length of lies and of absurdity that they are going through to try to tear down the Palestinian rights movement,” Miller told Al Jazeera.
How does Project Esther plan to take down the Palestinian rights movement?
The document calls for a multi-faceted campaign against supporters of Palestinian rights, targeting them legally, politically and financially.
The initiative outlines 19 goals that it labels as “desired effects”.
They include denying Palestinian rights supporters who are not US citizens access to universities, ensuring that social media platforms do not allow “anti-Semitic content”, and presenting evidence of “criminal activity” by Palestine advocates to the executive branch.
It also calls for refusing to grant permits for protests organised in support of Palestinian rights.
“We must wage lawfare,” it reads, referring to the tactic of using litigation to pressure opponents.
Is the Trump administration turning Project Esther recommendations into policy?
It appears to be the case.
“The phase we’re in now is starting to execute some of the lines of effort in terms of legislative, legal and financial penalties for what we consider to be material support for terrorism,” Coates told The New York Times.
Trump’s crackdown on college protests seems to align with what Project Esther is trying to achieve.
For example, the US administration has been revoking the visas of foreign students critical of Israel. This echoes a proposal in Project Esther, which calls for identifying students “in violation of student visa requirements.”
Why focus on universities?
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, said Project Esther targets universities because Israel is bleeding support among young people in the US.
“That’s why there’s such an overwhelming focus on universities and college campuses,” he told Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast.
Kenney-Shawa explained that support for Israel’s war on Gaza has been trending downwards across US demographics. But on college campuses, the change is more pronounced.
A recent poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 53 percent of US respondents had negative views of Israel, a number that rises to 71 percent among Democrats below the age of 50.
Is Project Esther working?
Advocates say that, in the immediate future, the crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement threatens the safety and wellbeing of activists, especially foreign students. But it has also sparked a backlash.
“The extreme nature of these attacks has also emboldened people to defiantly continue to speak out in the face of these attacks,” JVP’s Miller said.
“And it has actually, in many cases, awoken people – who weren’t paying attention before – to the hypocrisy that has so long existed in the willingness to silence and censor Palestinian rights activists.”
Earlier in May, several right-wing lawmakers and Trump allies came out in opposition of a bill that aimed to expand restrictions on boycotts of Israel, citing free speech concerns.
Trump’s anti-free speech tyranny is starting in America's colleges and universities, but it won’t stop there. Tyrants like Trump are never content with partial tyranny; it’s total tyranny they want. And Trump has a large cadre of fellow travelers helping him.
The Mainstream Media
All of America’s largest media outlets are persistent propagandists for Israel. They have censured access of the American people to the graphic realities and honest news reporting of Israel’s mass murders, rapes, torture and mass starvation of the Gazan people since the genocide began.
To be sure, graphic photos and videos, along with many detailed news reports, are available to the American people online, if they are willing to search for it. And, thankfully, many Americans are watching the daily horrors committed by the satanic Israeli government. That’s why now over 50% of the American people have negative views on Israel.
The Israel Lobby
There are scores of organizations in Washington, D.C., New York and other places in the U.S. shilling for Israel, most notable being The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
I list many of the Israeli lobby groups operating in Washington here.
These organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually lobbying the president, congressmen, senators and governors. Only the willingly blind do not know that the U.S. government—with the exception of a precious few brave, honest souls such as Thomas Massie and Rand Paul—are literally in the pockets of the Israel lobby.
Evangelical Televangelists, Pastors and Churches
Support for Israel among the vast majority of evangelical churches borders on fanaticism. People write to me every week telling me of their experiences within these Zionist “churches.” The word fanaticism is not hyperbolic.
Christian Zionism has become a religious cult.
These very powerful and influential institutions are uber supportive of Trump’s anti-free speech tyranny. What has started on university campuses will spill over into the commercial and religious worlds in earnest during the rest of Trump’s administration.
In fact, it’s already happening.
My friend, USS Liberty survivor and the President of the USS Liberty Veterans Association Phil Tourney, reports that Stew Peters and others were banned from appearing at the hotel where the Liberty survivors are conducting their upcoming 58th reunion, because of their opinions regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And without the enthusiastic support for Israel by evangelical pastors, televangelists and churches, the Zionist stranglehold over Washington, D.C., would come crashing down.
Bradlee Dean nailed it when he wrote:
You look at any government that means to control the people and the very first thing that you see them do is to illegally censor free speech.
But the real goal of the Zionist regime is to end the preaching and teaching of the New Testament. I explain this reality in a two-part message series entitled: In Zionist America, You Are Antisemitic If . . . .
Here is Part One of that message on YouTube.
Gaza, Palestine, is the modern Warsaw, Poland. And Christian Zionists in America are Trump’s enablers as he follows the Project Esther playbook to expunge all vestiges of resistance to this 21st-century holocaust.
P.S. This is the final call for pre-ordering THE FREEDOM DOCUMENTS.
This is the giant compilation of America’s greatest founding documents in one volume. It is available nowhere else. The deadline for pre-ordering is Wednesday, June 11, at 4:30pm Mountain Time. Print date is Thursday, June 12.
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© Chuck Baldwin
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