A former State Department employee was detained by New York police yesterday after he was seen on camera bullying and labeling an Egyptian halal street vendor selling as a terrorist and claiming that the deaths of 4,000 Palestinian children “wasn’t enough.”
The hate crime suspect and the unidentified man operating a halal cart on a Manhattan sidewalk got into several arguments over the Israeli-Hamas conflict in a video that went viral earlier this month.
According to a statement from the police, Stuart Seldowitz, 64, was taken into custody on suspicion of severe harassment, hate crime, inciting fear, and stalking at a place of employment.
The statement further reported a 24-year-old male victim stated to police that an individual approached him at his workplace multiple times and repeatedly made anti-Islamic statements on different dates, causing the victim to feel scared and annoyed.
A spokesman for the State Department, Matthew Miller, responded to questions regarding the video filmed incident by saying: The United States unequivocally opposes racist or discriminatory language of any form.
The conflict that began on October 7 has led to an increase in Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US, as well as a rise in the number of public demonstrations in favor of Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.
Posts across all social media showed Seldowitz saying, quote: If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.
The street vendor kept asking Seldowitz to “go, go, go, go”, “I don’t speak English”, and “I won’t hear it”. In response, Seldowitz says, “But you’re a terrorist. You back terrorism.”
Defending himself, Seldowitz claimed to local television news before his detention that the video posted on social media failed to tell the whole story and that he became upset only after the unidentified man said he supported the Hamas attacks on Israel that killed Israeli civilians, but there was no video proof to back up his accusations.
He added: The comments I made calling him out for his support of terrorism – those I think were appropriate.
According to Seldowitz’s now-defunct LinkedIn profile, he served as acting director of the National Security Council South Asia Directorate during the Obama administration.
In addition, he was employed by the State Department, which maintained an archived phone book for the agency. He disclosed to the New York Times that the Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs was where he had worked.
