Late last year, there was talk of an artificial intelligence project to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the United States, particularly on university campuses. The project, called "Project Esther," was designed to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the United States, particularly on university campuses.

As the war on Gaza rages on, the student movement for Palestine in America has resumed its activities, particularly after the arrest of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Regarding the Esther Project and the Trump administration's continued persecution of students participating in the movement for Palestine, the Al Jazeera Center for Studies published an analytical paper titled "Suppressing Palestine Supporters Using Artificial Intelligence to Institutionalize 'Trumpism' and Change the Identity of American Society." In it, researcher Dr. Hajj Muhammad al-Nasik discusses Trump's true goals behind combating anti-Semitism, and the extent to which he will succeed—with the help of far-right institutions—in institutionalizing Trumpism and silencing voices supporting the Palestinian cause.

The right-wing project to serve Israel

Trump is not hesitant to fulfill his promise. The project's founders have designed the Esther tool to organize and guide all willing partners in a coordinated effort that utilizes all available resources to combat anti-Semitism in the United States. They expressed their hope for the arrival of "a US administration willing to implement it."

The project's initiators got their wish, and those eager to implement it, boast about it, and make it a pressing issue reached the White House. Even members of his administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were instrumental in its implementation, making it a federal policy under Trump.

Since Operation Protective Edge on October 7, 2023, the West has mobilized its soft power, alongside its military might, to support this war, harnessing its media, social media, sports, and academic institutions to justify Israel's crimes.

With the emergence of the counternarrative, led in part by American college students, Israel's supporters in the United States were alarmed, and the Zionist lobby began to unite efforts against the "modern Haman" and revive Esther, the historical Jewish heroine who saved the Jews from his brutality.

Thus, he laid the theoretical framework for the Esther Project: "A National Strategy to Combat Anti-Semitism," in another double revival of McCarthyism, rising from its ashes in a more extreme form, this time distributing "anti-Semitic" stickers instead of "communist" stickers.

Speaking of McCarthyism, its application means that even a hint of sympathy for the Palestinians is enough to label an organization or individual as part of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). The one calling for its application today is not Senator John McCarthy, but rather the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind the development of Project 2025, and the Esther Project as part of it.

Heritage has helped shape the policies of Republican presidents for decades, and now focuses on institutionalizing Trumpism. It developed the Esther Project in collaboration with the America First Policy Institute, sometimes described as "the White House in waiting."

The project claims that the motivations and understanding of history of pro-Palestinian groups come "straight from the pages" of the Communist Manifesto.

What's interesting about the project is that it involves a kind of "copy-pasting" of the Communist Manifesto to understand the motivations of pro-Palestinian groups and their understanding of history. In doing so, the project deliberately suggests that the threat posed by pro-Palestinian groups is similar to the communist threat that threatened the United States 70 years ago, in order to legitimize the revival of McCarthyism, which once again wiped out communists in the country.

“The right-wing Zionist hegemons wanted to outlaw Jews who were anti-Zionist, or non-Zionist, or critical of Israel, and they succeeded in turning that into policy on the campuses,” says Columbia University professor Joseph Hawley, who has been involved in organizing Jewish faculty members who oppose the war and exploiting anti-Semitism. “Now they want to make it federal law.”

Although Americans who oppose US support for Israel's genocide in Palestine are subject to widespread repression, the project seeks to institutionalize and governmentalize this repression to deport, imprison, disenfranchise, expel, or drive underground those sympathetic to Palestine. The US Jewish community will also be purged of any elements sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Politico's White House correspondent, Iri Sentner, says Republicans have long loathed college campuses for their role as breeding grounds for culture war campaigns like "Woke Culture," which champions diversity, equality, inclusion, and academic excellence. They saw an opportunity to punish these organizations in the Palestine protests.

Mahmoud Khalil... the first victim

Axios reported that the US State Department is using artificial intelligence to revoke the visas of foreign students "who appear to support Hamas." This is part of a "catch and revoke" campaign that aims to review tens of thousands of social media accounts of student visa holders. The campaign is being conducted in collaboration with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, in what a senior State Department official described as a "whole-of-government approach."

Student Mahmoud Khalil is the first victim of this policy. Trump commented on his arrest by saying that more arrests would follow. He added in a post on Truth Social, "Immigration and Customs Enforcement proudly arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a radicalized foreign student affiliated with Hamas, on the Columbia campus." The White House account on X also posted a photo of Khalil with the caption, "Shalom Mahmoud."

The day before his arrest, Khalil asked Columbia University President Katrina Armstrong for protection, telling her in an email, "I couldn't sleep for fear that ICE or someone else would come to my house." However, she did not respond and he was arrested at his home, along with his eight-month-pregnant wife, and transferred to a federal immigration prison in Louisiana.

The punitive measures against universities have reached such a level that the Trump administration has canceled approximately $400 million in grants and contracts awarded to a number of universities, including Columbia University. This could deprive many students around the world of the opportunity to pursue their studies at American universities, alleging the universities' failure to address the ongoing harassment of Jewish students.

"Anti-Semitism" scapegoat

Trump may have some success in deporting some foreign students to silence some voices supporting the Palestinian cause, but he will not achieve his goal. The students are only a small part of a broad base of Americans who support Palestinian rights, especially after the war on the Gaza Strip.

Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that Trump is only targeting students from the groups, the task is not easy. Judge Jesse Furman ruled that Khalil cannot be deported "unless ordered by the court." His arrest sparked a wave of criticism and condemnation from those who believed that deportations could violate the US Constitution if implemented, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

Members of the US House of Representatives condemned Khalil's arrest, calling it "a dangerous precedent and a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression." Journalist Emily Tamkin warned that the Trump administration's focus on anti-Semitism could make Jews less safe, noting that Trump seeks to attack higher education, freedom of expression and assembly, and immigration standards, all under the guise of anti-Semitic conspiracies.

"The Columbia University administration has done its best to appease the Trump administration," Sheldon Pollock, professor emeritus of South Asian studies at Columbia University, wrote to Tamkin. "But it hasn't worked, and this attack has nothing to do with anti-Semitism."

The United Nations, through its Secretary-General, António Guterres, condemned Khalil's arrest, saying it was necessary to "highlight the importance of upholding the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly everywhere."

Ultimately, President Trump appears to be using his war on anti-Semitism as a pretext for achieving other goals: imposing a right-wing agenda that believes in white supremacy and seeks to change the identity of American society. This, as journalist Thomas Friedman has described it, is "a great collapse in full swing."

Source: Al Jazeera Net