A former national security adviser to President Barack Obama has been arrested on hate crime charges after he was caught on video harassing a Manhattan halal cart vendor with Islamophobic remarks on several occasions.
Stuart Seldowitz, who worked in the State Department for over 30 years before joining the Obama Administration’s National Security Council, was cuffed Wednesday on hate crime/stalking, second-degree aggravated harassment, stalking causing fear, and stalking at employment.
The suspect can be seen hurling bigoted remarks at the Muslim vendor, and scolding him about the war between Israel and Hamas.
“If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn’t enough,” Seldowitz said on one occasion. “It wasn’t enough.”
The 24-year-old street vendor responds to Seldowitz barrage of bigotry calmy, and asks him to “please go.”
https://twitter.com/mhdksafa/status/1727086429879373871
But Seldowitz, in at least three different videos recorded on separate days, remains on the sidewalk near the intersection of E. 83rd Street and Second Avenue for several minutes, and continues his tirade against the food purveyor.
“Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?” Seldowitz asks in one video, referring to the Prophet Muhammad, and threatens to “put up big signs here that say ‘this guy believes in Hamas.’”
Seldowitz, on another occasion, calls the man “ignorant” and verbally demeans him for working as a street vendor, before questioning if he was in the country legally and threatening that he has “friends in Immigration.”
In that instance, a construction worker steps in and defends the halal cart worker, prompting Seldowitz to leave.
Yet another video emerges of Obama advisor Stuart Seldowitz's racist harassment of the same man selling food on the streets of New York.pic.twitter.com/9WZLnP3O7I
— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) November 21, 2023
The vendor, who was interviewed by the Daily Mail on Wednesday, denied harboring any support for Hamas, and said he had called the police to deal with Seldowitz’s verbal attacks on multiple occasions, but NYPD officers took no meaningful actions to halt the aggression.
After the videos went viral on various social media platforms, however, the NYPD began investigating the situation as a potential hate crime, and cuffed him on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Upper East Side residents flocked to the vendor’s food cart to show their support for the victim, and the shop’s proprietors set up an adjacent table with chairs for people to “break bread” and have tolerant conversations with their neighbors.
In the wake of the violence in the Middle East, hate crimes have spiked across the five boroughs — with a 55% spike in crimes motivated by prejudice since Hamas’ initial attacks against Israelis on Oct. 7.
Seldowitz had previously held positions in Democratic and Republican administrations, including as the State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs. He then moved to the National Security Council during Obama’s time in office — though he got that temporary assignment through non-political government channels, and was not directly hired by the administration’s political appointees.
Seldowitz, 64, has not held any government office for several years, and had been working as an affiliate of a Manhattan-based lobbying firm, Gotham Government Relations — which cut all ties with Seldowitz in the wake of the videos emerging on social media.
“Gotham Government Relations has ended all affiliation with Stuart Seldowitz,” the lobbying firm said in a statement. “The video of his actions is vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm.”
The company’s founder, David Schwartz, also added that he would represent the vendor in court, free of charge, if he chooses to file a lawsuit against Seldowitz.
In addition to losing his working relationship with Gotham Government Relations, Seldowitz has become infamous on social media, drawing widespread condemnation for his actions.
In an interview with the New York Times earlier this week, Seldowitz apologized for his actions, and claimed the vendor was a supporter of Hamas — though there is no evidence of that accusation in any videos of their interactions.
After claiming he did not harbor Islamophobic beliefs, Seldowitz said he regretted making comments about Muslims, but did not back down from his aggression against the vendor.
“Instead of focusing in on him and what he said, I expanded into insulting his religion and so on,” Seldowitz said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Seldowitz’s arrest, and the charges against the suspect.
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