A former US State Department employee and national security official, identified as Stuart Seldowitz, was captured on video engaging in harassment of a halal food vendor in Manhattan. The viral footage shows him taking pictures of the vendor and directing hateful Islamophobic comments towards him.
In a brief exchange about child casualties, Seldowitz callously remarks, "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn't enough."
There are a series of disturbing videos online where Seldowitz is seen hurling a barrage of anti-Palestine comments and insults at the unidentified vendor. One video shows Seldowitz accosting the vendor, calling him a "terrorist" and making inflammatory remarks about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Watch the video here:
However, Seldowitz later regretted his statement; he said in a phone interview with The New York Times that he had not seen the videos. The episodes started after he asked the vendor if he was Egyptian. As the conversation progressed, the man expressed support for Hamas, Seldowitz said, though no such claims are captured in any of the videos that have been made public.
“At that point, I got rather upset, and I've said things to him that, in retrospect, I probably regret, though—that I do regret,” Seldowitz said. “Instead of focusing on him and what he said, I expanded into insulting his religion and so on.”
According to The Hill, Gotham Government Relations, a DC-based lobbying firm, has reportedly cut ties with Stuart Seldowitz who was a former Obama administration adviser.
"Gotham Government Relations has ended all affiliation with Stuart Seldowitz, an individual who hasn't contributed to our work in years," the lobbying firm said Tuesday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The news outlet further said that Seldowitz served as the acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under the Obama administration, according to his Gotham Government Relations bio.
He was hired by the lobbying firm last year as its foreign affairs chair, according to a news release.
His comments come amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which has led to a spike in anti-semitism and Islamophobia in the US.
