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NYC officials condemn Islamophobic comments by Jewish ex-State Department staffer at Upper East Side halal cart
(New York Jewish Week) — Elected officials in New York City condemned Islamophobic comments by a Jewish former State Department staffer after videos showed him berating a halal food cart vendor on the Upper East Side.
The man in the videos, Stuart Seldowitz, praised the killing of Palestinian children and made disparaging remarks about Islam. The videos show him berating the man on multiple occasions.
Seldowitz held positions in the State Department across administrations of both parties, including a post in the Office of Israel and Palestinian affairs, but is no longer employed by the government. An online biography that has since been deleted said that Seldowitz had a nearly 30-year career with the State Department and New York State.
Seldowitz is heard in one of the videos saying, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.” The vendor is heard off-camera asking Seldowitz to leave and generally declining to respond to his taunts.
The videos were posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, as tensions soar in New York amid fallout from the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. New York City streets have seen a stream of verbal disputes surrounding pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel protests. Scores of viral videos and photos have documented people tearing down posters of Israeli hostages put up by pro-Israel activists around the city.
Antisemitic incidents have soared across the five boroughs since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and Islamophobic incidents have increased to a lesser degree, according to the New York Police Department.
Videos of Seldowitz’s encounters drew widespread attention online, along with harsh criticism from local officials.
Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said on X, “This Islamophobic bigotry is absolutely reprehensible,” and that the police were reviewing the incident. Keith Powers, the New York City Council majority leader, said, “This xenophobic and disgusting behavior has no place on the Upper East Side or New York City.”
New York State Assembly member Alex Bores, who represents the Upper East Side, said “hate has no home” in the neighborhood and that he had visited the vendor.
The lobbying firm Gotham Government Relations, which named Seldowitz last year as its foreign affairs chair, said it had cut all ties with him due to his “vile, racist” behavior.
Seldowitz told the New York Jewish Week that he went to the cart for a soda when he learned the vendor was Egyptian and brought up tensions in New York surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas, as well as other Gaza terror groups. The vendor then defended Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Seldowitz said. Comments to that effect do not appear in the videos circulating online, which are taken from the direction of the halal cart.
“That sort of set me off and I said certain things that I wish I had not said, that I regret, and that were offensive not just to him but for many other people,” Seldowitz said, adding that the confrontation had only been verbal, with no physical aspect or threats from either side. He denied having any “animus toward Arabs or to Muslims or to Islam.”
One of the food cart’s employees told the local news site Documented that many of the vendor’s customers are Jewish and that the workers had a positive relationship with local community members.
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The post NYC officials condemn Islamophobic comments by Jewish ex-State Department staffer at Upper East Side halal cart appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.