Ex-Obama Official Who Hurled Bigoted Abuse at Food Vendor Fired By Firm: 4,000 Dead Palestinian Kids ‘Wasn’t Enough’

Jamie FreveleNov 21st, 2023, 4:44 pm
 
Stuart Seldowitz

@itslaylas on Twitter/X

A video featuring a man in a green hoodie and a blazer spewing Islamophobic hate speech at a New York City food cart vendor made the rounds on Tuesday, and it didn’t take long for him to be identified – and then fired.

The man was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, whose former employer – Gotham Government Relations – stated in two tweets that it had “ended all affiliation” with him while also claiming he hadn’t worked there for years. Though others, including journalist Matt Binder, pointed out a press release from just under one year ago that Seldowitz was joining the same firm’s team as its Foreign Affairs Chair.

Binder also shared more about Seldowitz’s career, saying he is a “former Director of the National Security Council under President [Barack] Obama and former diplomat for the U.S. State Department serving during five presidencies.” His LinkedIn page says his position in the Obama administration was Acting Director of the National Security Council South Asia Directorate from February 2009 to January 2011.

But perhaps more disturbingly, in an October interview on BitChute about the Israel-Hamas War, Seldowitz is identified as Deputy Director/Senior Political Officer in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003.

The original video from a Twitter/X user named Layla runs over two minutes, during which Seldowitz says several bigoted, insulting slurs to the vendor, who has not been identified and recorded Seldowitz from inside his food cart. Seldowitz started in on Egyptian slurs, invoking the Mukhabarat intelligence service in Egypt, saying they “will get your parents. Does his father like his fingernails? They will take them out one-by-one.”

After Seldowitz took his own picture of the vendor, asking him to “smile,” he asked him, “Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?” then called him “ignorant” for not speaking English. Seldowitz continued to refer to Mohammed as a “rapist”  before this part of the tirade:

What do you speak? You speak Arabic, the language of the Quran, the holy Quran. That some people use as a toilet. What do you think of that? People who use the Quran as a toilet. Does it bother you? Does it bother you? Tell me the truth? You don’t speak English? That’s too bad. That’s why you’re selling food in in a food cart, because you’re ignorant, but you should learn English. It’ll help you when they deport you back to Egypt.

Seldowitz later returned to the vendor, who initially didn’t open his cart window. Seldowitz continued to harass him by flashing lights and showing some kind of sticker. When the vendor slid the window open, Seldowitz unloaded on him, calling him a “terrorist” and questioning his citizenship, also claiming to know who owns all the food carts. Then he told the vendor “You support killing little children” and “if we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.” And all with a smile on his face:

Since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens by Hamas, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia have spiked, from hate speech to violence.

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