Meet Senator Iman Jodeh: Zohran Mamdani’s Radical Colorado Counterpart

By Ahnaf Kalam | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

New York City has inflicted Zohran Mamdani on itself—the socialist assemblyman who parlayed his anti-Israel bile and Islamist sympathies into the mayoralty, all while whining about “racist attacks” from those who dare call out his jihadist flirtations. Colorado, not to be outdone in this parade of self-destruction, has Iman Jodeh: our own state senator, the so-called “trailblazer” whose Palestinian fixation and alliances with terror cheerleaders make her a mirror image of Mamdani’s radicalism. 

Both peddle the same poison—elevating Hamas’s “narrative” over facts, hobnobbing with antisemites, and stoking divisions that rot the body politic. Now, with Mamdani’s win and the progressive purge of Aurora’s city council—race-baiting activists like Alli Jackson narrowly booting out realists like Danielle Jurinsky and Amsalu Kassaw—the left crows victory. But this isn’t progress; it’s the mainstreaming of fanaticism.

Jodeh’s pro-Islamist credentials stretch back years, a sordid trail of alliances with hate-mongers and terror apologists that betray her oath to serve all Coloradans. Sold initially as a pragmatic reformer for Aurora’s crumbling suburbs, she’s morphed into a mouthpiece for radical networks, her “bridge-building” leading straight to the swamps of pro-Islamist ideology.

The capstone was her starring role at the 2025 Al-Bireh Society convention in Denver’s Marriott Tech Center over Labor Day weekend, August 29 to September 1—a venue of corporate tedium turned into a cauldron of antisemitic venom and pro-Hamas agitprop. Hundreds of expats from the West Bank town of Al-Bireh, plus various local and national agitators, assembled for what was billed as a family reunion but devolved into a festival of pro-Islamist and antisemitic bile: panels on “effective resistance,” boycott sessions, and talks framing Hamas’s October 7 savagery as mere “context” for “liberation.” 

Jodeh, the Aurora Democrat, took the stage amid keffiyehs and watermelon icons, preaching about “amplifying Palestinian voices in power” and vowing loyalty to “the narrative” of endless grievance on her panel alongside the disgraced Linda Sarsour. The crowd, flaunting maps that erase Israel, erupted in cheers. Jodeh grinned, nodded—never intervening. No nod to the 1,200 Jews massacred on October 7, 2023, or the hostages festering in Gaza’s dungeons. 

The event raised over $300,000.

The Al-Bireh Society itself is no benign expat club; it’s a Florida-based nonprofit of Palestinian elites that denies Israel’s right to exist and functions as a conduit for militancy. The society’s namesake town, Al-Bireh in the West Bank, is a Hamas hotbed: mosques there double as offices for the Hamas movement, per Palestinian intelligence reports urging crackdowns. Zakat committees in Al-Bireh and nearby Ramallah—charity fronts—are accused of funneling support to Hamas, including donations tied to terrorist ops and material aid in a decentralized network to dodge detection. One report details Hamas operatives in Al-Bireh orchestrating these shadowy connections. 

Past events reek too: the 2018 Florida convention featured PLO apologist Hanan Ashrawi, who rebrands bombings as “military operations” and civilians as “targets,” and was sponsored by Al-Quds Bank, sued for bankrolling the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” rewards to terrorists. Denver’s 2025 roster was equally foul: Vivian Khalaf, chairman of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, accused of diverting aid to terror tunnels; Munif Treish, chairman of the Red Crescent Hospital in Al-Bireh, linked to payoffs for killers, and others equally as wicked.

The panels were a Hamas hall of infamy: Abdullah Elagha who publicly reveled in the murder of American-Israeli Elan Ganeles as a “settler” downed by “racism,” hailed Hamas fighters as “troops” and regularly glorified terrorists; Khalid Mansour, axed from Accenture for antisemitic rants and terror praise, now a Ph.D. instructor and AI director in IT at Skaggs School of Pharmacy; Glenn Morris, a radical CU Denver professor and professional third-rate activist; and others. 

Headliners included: Marc Lamont Hill, who CNN fired for his “river to the sea” chants, who insists Hamas aren’t terrorists, praises attackers targeting Jewish kids, and blames Israel for Hamas atrocities like rape and decapitation; Norman Finkelstein, the self-hating crank who mocks Jewish students, minimizes the Holocaust, justifies Hamas via the March of Return, and got banned from Israel and denied tenure for his bile; and Linda Sarsour, the disgraced former Women’s March organizer and queen of Islamist hate, who vilifies Americans and Israelis alike, platforms at bogus antisemitism discussions despite her own venom, backs radical causes, and catches flak for her worship of Farrakhan, her blood libels, and her shielding of PLO bombers.

From left: Marc Lamont Hill, Colorado Sen. Iman Jodeh, and Norman Finkelstein at the Al-Bireh Convention in Denver.

Weeks later came her Denver Post op-ed – published just a day before the second anniversary of the October 7 massacre – a 1,200-word exercise in moral contortionism that airbrushed Hamas and October 7 entirely. Opening with “730 days watching Palestinians live-stream their genocide,” she cited 65,000 “dead” from a Hamas-inflated Lancet study ignoring combatants. 

The screed’s tone: relentless victimhood. “This is not about semantics. This is not about Hamas. This is not about Benjamin Netanyahu.” October 7? A fleeting “attack,” swiftly spun into Israel’s “catastrophe.” No mention of Gaza rockets, human shields, or Hamas’s genocidal manifesto—just Israel as perpetual monster. The rest of her remarks ranged from heavily contested to outright lies. 

Readers revolted: one decried her silence on Hamas child-soldier mills; another slammed it as propaganda entombing Jewish victims. Her byline—”Palestinian lawmaker”—says it: not a Coloradan rep, not even an American, but a partisan spear-carrier for a foreign cause, and one that elevates a designated terrorist organization while decrying an American ally.

This 2025 surge crowns a deeper rot. Rewind to 2017: Aurora’s District 41 simmered with blue-collar misery—buckling roads, murders spiking from Venezuelan gangs, rents devouring wages, safety evaporating. Jodeh campaigned as a fresh progressive: criminal justice tweaks, wage hikes, fixes. Bankrolled with $58,000 versus her GOP opponent’s $4,000, endorsed by Warren and Biden, she swept in. Press swooned: “bridge-builder.”

But those bridges veered to Islamist redoubts. As Colorado Muslim Society (CMS) spokesperson, she shilled for a den of bigotry and vitriol: ex-imam Karim Abuzaid is known for ranting about stonings, floggings, AIDS as queer retribution, COVID as a punishment from Allah for homosexuality in the West, and worse. CMS hosted Sarsour in 2020, defending an Al-Qaeda goon and the Pulse Nightclub shooter’s wife. Jodeh remained mute.

After 2020, red flags proliferated. On October 7, 2023, Hamas committed butchery—elders were executed, ravers were violated and torched, and infants were charred. When the Israeli bereaved family members of the victims met lawmakers in February 2024—including Jared Polis—Jodeh vanished, pleading “conflict.” She’d defended Tim Hernández, who paraded at a post-atrocity “Resistance” rally, cheered his praise for Hamas, and clashed with Jewish visitors and constituents. Jodeh’s claim was that the incident was just “misunderstood activism”—a thinly veiled euphemism for terror affinity. One would think she could do better.

By 2024’s anniversary, deception deepened: her article, “Genocide One Year Later” parroted the false figure of 41,000 “Palestinian deaths” (Hamas’s fudged mix of fighters and innocents), skipping the Israelis slain, the hostages, and the thousands of rockets launched from kindergartens and hospitals. Israel’s retaliation was labeled “genocide,” ignoring shields and Hamas’s Jew-kill charter. This was not slant—it was calculated forgery, akin to ‘Protocols’ calumnies.

Sarsour clings to Jodeh like rot. Since 2020’s CMS red carpet (and likely prior)—Sarsour was ousted from Women’s March for Farrakhan idolatry, libels, and backing PLO killer Rasmea Odeh—Jodeh stayed loyal: she participated in webinars, exchanged endorsements, and earned Sarsour’s “sister in the struggle” tag. At Al-Bireh, they traded reciprocal plugs; Jodeh’s tweeted selfie proclaimed “unbreakable solidarity.” It’s intersectional poison: Jew-hate as “justice,” Hamas as “resistance.”

All the while, Aurora decays: homicide rates are severely elevated, rents are stratospheric, and I-225/I-70 are held together by prayers, promises, and wasted taxpayer money. None of which seem to matter to Iman Jodeh any more than her constituents do to her. 

Ahnaf Kalam is a journalist and counter-extremism analyst based in Denver, CO. He is the former digital editor and podcast host at the Middle East Forum, where he writes regularly. He holds a degree in political science and international studies from the University of Colorado, Denver.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.