More than a year after Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel, antisemitism in the United States is alive and spreading. Recently released FBI data reveal anti-Jewish hate crimes reached a record number of 11,862 incidents in 2023, accounting for 15% of all hate crimes against a community that totals just 2% of the American population. This is over 300% higher than it was in 2022 and 430% above the 2021 level.
Despite the vast investments of political, financial, and other resources in the battle to combat antisemitism, when Israel is forced into a multi-front war of survival, antisemites across America are emboldened and empowered. And those brandishing the flags of Hamas, Hezbollah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations have made it clear that the target of their hatred is not just the Jews, but the U.S. as well.
These anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jew-haters are laying siege to our education system, political processes, and society. Their ideology and actions directly challenge and attempt to undermine the American values fundamental to our way of life, our nation’s success, and its future. Consequently, they pose a threat not just to American Jews, but to all Americans.
Unfortunately, our leaders are failing our country in this moment. President Joe Biden has said those carrying Hamas flags “have a point,” and Vice President Kamala Harris said she “respects” the voices of these protesters.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the self-declared highest-ranking elected Jewish politician in American history, was found by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to have advised Columbia University leaders on how to thwart Republican efforts to expose antisemitism on their campus and is stalling the passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, despite its passage in May by a large bipartisan majority in House of Representatives.
Still, inaction is not an option. And combatting today’s form of antisemitism requires a new approach, one that draws from the strength of American civil society.
Project Esther is such an approach. Named after the Jewish heroine from the story of Purim who saved the Jewish people from genocide in ancient Persia, Project Esther is a blueprint to save the U.S. from those utilizing antisemitism to destroy it.
The key to combatting today’s antisemitism is recognizing the ecosystem in which it thrives: Politically and financially powerful funders support a network of organizations that recruit activist followers that commit the antisemitic activities we see every day, including marches, campus protests, vandalism, riots, and violence.
The objective is to dismantle the infrastructure by denying it the resources required for its antisemitic activity. Targeting the groups and organizations that receive the funding and deploy it to their grassroots followers who engage in antisemitic activity, the useful idiots we see on college campuses, for example, will divorce the means from the opportunity, thereby rendering these activists incapable of threatening U.S. citizens.
Project Esther is an initiative of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which was created in the weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. As a coalition of Jewish, Christian, and conservative organizations and individuals, the task force can leverage existing authorities, resources, capabilities, and activities to implement Project Esther.
Though the task at hand is immense, there is precedent in American history for rooting out an evil force from within our society. Between World War I and World War II, the U.S. witnessed the rise of a highly organized, nationally syndicated group of American Nazis known as the German American Bund. The Bund generated income, held large rallies replete with Nazi-style uniforms and swastikas, ran family and youth camps, and coordinated actions to implement a near mirror-image version of Hitler’s Nazi Germany here in the U.S.
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Fortunately, most Americans saw the Bund for what it was: an antisemitic de facto extension of the German Nazi machine infecting the U.S. Key Americans, including Jews, recognized the threat and mobilized a whole-of-community effort to counter the Bund; aiming criminal prosecutions at its leadership and financial networks, exposing its fraud and abuse, holding large counterdemonstrations, and so forth. By the eve of World War II, the Bund was a hollow shell of its former self — it had ceased to function as a national network capable of spreading Nazi ideology.
The same playbook can be applied to today’s antisemites who wave the flags of jihadist, genocidal, antisemitic, and anti-American organizations. With a new administration taking office in January 2025, the opportunity to roll back the tide of the anti-American antisemitism sweeping the country and secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans is here. Just as Queen Esther saved the Jews in ancient Persia, Project Esther can save America today.
James Carafano is the E.W. Richardson Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Ellie Cohanim is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. To learn more about Project Esther, please visit combatantisemitismtf.org.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
