“If we killed 4,000 Palestinian children, it wouldn’t be enough,” former diplomat Stuart Seldowitz tells a halal cart seller in a video.
A former senior US official is facing backlash after harassing a halal food seller in New York.
Stuart Seldowitz, who previously served as deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, was filmed taunting and threatening the seller in Manhattan. Amid apparent controversy over the ongoing war in Gaza, he told his opponent that more Palestinian children should die.
This man in a green jacket was berating and harassing a halal cart vendor near 83rd and 2nd Avenue in New York. Does anyone know who this man is? Plan to report to authorities. pic.twitter.com/GwklyXpsPH
– Layla 🪬 (@itslaylas) November 21, 2023
“If we killed 4,000 Palestinian children, it wouldn’t be enough,” Seldowitz said calmly in an exchange filmed and posted on the social media platform X.
In other exchanges, he heard insults against the Prophet Muhammad.
He also threatens to use his government connections to mobilize the Egyptian secret police against the seller, whom he accuses of being a “terrorist.”
“The Mukhabarat in Egypt will have your parents. Does your father like his nails? They will eliminate them one by one,” Seldowitz said with a smile.
The seller is heard several times asking him to leave and telling him that he does not speak English.
Seldowitz says the seller’s lack of English proficiency shows he is “ignorant.”
“You should learn English, it will help you when they send you back to Egypt and the Mukhabarat wants to interview you,” he told the seller with a smile.
US government experience
Seldowitz would have had a distinguished career at the State Department. He also served on the South Asia directorate of the National Security Council under then-President Barack Obama and became foreign affairs chairman of the New York lobbying firm Gotham Government Relations, according to a company’s 2022 press release.
The former diplomat admitted in a New York Times interview that he got angry with the Manhattan salesman and said things he “probably regrets.”
He claimed the seller made him angry after he expressed sympathy for the Palestinian group Hamas, although none of the videos show the seller mentioning the group.
“I got pretty upset and said things to him that, in retrospect, I probably regret,” Seldowitz told the newspaper. “Instead of focusing on him and what he was saying, I started insulting his religion and so on. »
Seldowitz insisted he was not Islamophobic, saying he had many Muslim and Arab colleagues who could vouch for him.
Gotham Government Relations said Tuesday that it has severed all ties with Seldowitz and apparently removed his profile from their website.
The company’s CEO, David Schwartz, said he was “personally outraged and offended” by Seldowitz’s “vile” language and offered to legally represent the food vendor on a pro bono basis.
The incident underscores growing tensions globally and in the United States following the 47-day war in Gaza, which has killed at least 14,100 Palestinians, more than a third of whom were children.
Since October 7, frequent pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protests have taken place in New York, which has significant Muslim and Jewish populations.
