Former Obama administration adviser and US State Department employee, Stuart Seldowitz, has issued an apology after a video of him engaging in a racist rant towards a halal food vendor in Manhattan went viral. The footage captured Seldowitz taking pictures of the vendor and directing Islamophobic comments towards him.
In the video, Seldowitz callously remarks, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.” There are several disturbing videos online where Seldowitz is seen hurling anti-Palestine comments and insults at the vendor. In one video, he even goes as far as accosting the vendor and calling him a “terrorist,” while making inflammatory remarks about the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Seldowitz later expressed regret for his statements, claiming that he had not seen the videos during a phone interview with The New York Times. He explained that the episodes began after he asked the vendor if he was Egyptian, and as the conversation progressed, the vendor expressed support for Hamas. However, no such claims were captured in any of the public videos.
“I got rather upset, and I’ve said things to him that, in retrospect, I probably regret, though—that I do regret,” Seldowitz admitted. “Instead of focusing on him and what he said, I expanded into insulting his religion and so on.”
Gotham Government Relations, a DC-based lobbying firm, has reportedly cut ties with Seldowitz, who served as a former Obama administration adviser. According to his bio, he was the acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate. The firm had hired him last year as its foreign affairs chair.
Seldowitz’s comments come at a time of heightened tensions between Israel and Hamas, leading to a rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the US.
