A lobbying group has cut ties with an ex-adviser to former President Barack Obama after videos surfaced that show the man making Islamophobic comments and threats to a food cart employee in New York City.
The videos, posted on X (formerly Twitter) by a Columbia University student, shows Stuart Seldowitz asking someone off camera, “Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” and saying that killing 4,000 Palestinian children “wasn’t enough.”
Seldowitz was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under Obama and was deputy director/senior political officer in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003. More recently, he served as foreign affairs chair for Gotham Government Relations, which announced his new role in a press release in November 2022.
On Tuesday afternoon, Gotham announced on Twitter that it had cut ties with Seldowitz.
Fuck…ing…HELL
Often when a headline has only part of a sentence, it was taken out of context so I watched the video.
narrators voice “it was not taken out of context”
I personally have strong dislike of all fundamentalist religious teachings but the things this guy says are despicable. We don’t have to respect someone’s opinion but we have to respect their right to hold it, and saying vile shit like this only furthers divisions.
Honestly the context makes it even worse. It’s not like he was voicing an abhorrent opinion that he just assumed would remain private. He said this while accosting an innocent food cart vendor with Islamaphobic comments and threats.
Yeah, not trying to make excuses for him as he’s probably just a vile POS but this is like mental breakdown territory.
Maybe he personally lost someone close to him on 7th Oct and now he’s taking it out on someone he perceives as ‘Arab’. Even if that was the case though there’s no excuse for this kind of hate speech, go grieve in private or with family / friends.
I hate so much that there are people like him out in the world. Many of us are desperately trying to find ways to come together and they make it so much more difficult.