Why Were the Graves of So Many Jewish GIs Marked by a Cross?
4 min read
Michelle Ahdoot’s family fled Iran when radical ideology took over. Now she's watching it happen again, and she's not staying quiet.
Michelle Ahdoot is Iranian Jewish on both sides. Her parents were born in Iran. Her husband was born in Iran. She grew up in America knowing exactly why her family had to flee: radical ideology that started on college campuses, crept into mainstream culture, and eventually swallowed a country whole. She watched it happen to her family's homeland. She recognizes the pattern now.
"We know what that can bring," she says. "And that's what we're seeing happen now."
Ahdoot is the founding director of End Jew Hatred, the only Jewish civil rights movement in America. The organization grew out of the Lawfare Project, founded by Brooke Goldstein, a civil rights litigation fund that provides free legal representation to victims of antisemitism with the goal of driving systemic change.
End Jew Hatred itself was the brainchild of Goldstein, born during Covid when she watched everyone march for civil rights and realized her own Jewish friends wouldn't stand with her. "Everyone else has a movement," Goldstein said. "I don't have people standing with us." So she built one.
When Ahdoot joined, they were fighting battles most people hadn't noticed yet. At CUNY Law School, speakers at a commencement ceremony delivered what she describes as slander and incitement from the podium. End Jew Hatred showed up to protest. They got 30 people outside the chancellor's office.
"I never questioned whether we were making a difference," she says. "I questioned why people weren't hearing the alarm bells."
When October 7th happened, Ahdoot had about five seconds of shock. Then she got on the phone.
By that afternoon, she was calling every organization she knew in New York, large and small. The next morning, about a thousand people rallied across from the United Nations. It wasn't massive, but it was real, and it was fast.
What made it possible was the infrastructure End Jew Hatred had quietly built before the attack. Ahdoot had spent two years as Chief Media and Marketing Officer building out a digital presence in English, Spanish, and Hebrew, spanning three time zones and three continents. When the world woke up to what was happening in Israel, they were ready.
"If we had not made that investment before October 7th, we wouldn't have been able to move the way we did," she says.
Out of those networks came initiatives like Pens for Swords, a grassroots letter-writing campaign. The people who built it came straight out of End Jew Hatred's community.
Ahdoot went to NYU and loved it. She was proud of her Jewish life on campus and proud to call herself an alumna.
Then, on October 7th, one of the first viral videos of hostage posters being torn down came from NYU. Children's faces ripped off walls.
She didn't pull her kids from the college pipeline. She believes in going in and fighting to change things from the inside. Jewish enrollment has dipped at some schools, but she's noticed it rising at others, particularly Southern universities like Vanderbilt and Duke. She sees that presence as essential, not just for Jewish students' own confidence, but for protecting minority rights more broadly.
Standing on the rooftop of Aish overlooking the Western Wall and the Temple Mount below, Ahdoot was asked what she prays for.
"Unity," she said without hesitating. "That's it."
Then she smiled. Her last name, Ahdoot, means unity. Her maiden name was Shalom, meaning peace. "That's my calling," she says.
She's not shy about what unity requires. Jews need to lead by example. When Jewish unity breaks down, she says, that's historically when the worst happens: exile, destruction, vulnerability. She sees the internal divisions before October 7th as a warning.
"We have our work cut out for us. But if we're loud, if we're strong, if we have solidarity, the future can be bright."
Loud, she'll tell you, is good. Silence is not an option. She's been saying that since before anyone was listening.
Watch the full interview of Jamie in the Rova:
Beautiful interview — well done!