New Yorkers have rallied to support a halal food cart targeted by a former adviser to US President Barack Obama who unleashed an Islamophobic and genocidal rant.
People lined up to buy halal chicken and rice and sat at tables set up around the food cart in Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighbourhood on Tuesday.
The Street Vendor Project, which works with the thousands of food carts in New York City, described a “moving scene” with New Yorkers from “all walks of life coming together” and “taking a stand against anti-Muslim hate.”
The former United States national security official and ex-Barack Obama adviser, Stuart Seldowitz, was captured on video harassing a halal food vendor in Manhattan in recent weeks, making genocidal comments against children in Gaza.
The man who called the vendor “terrorist”, said that killing 4,000 Palestinian children “wasn’t enough.”
After a brief back-and-forth about children of Gaza being killed by Israel, Seldowitz tells the man: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”
Seldowitz, was recorded in several videos posted on X, taking pictures of the vendor and berating him with Islamophobic comments.
The Muslim vendor is heard on the videos asking Seldowitz to “please go” and saying that he would call the cops.
The ex-Obama adviser heard saying in one clip, “It’s a free country — it’s not like Egypt.” In the same clip, Seldowitz calls the vendor “ignorant” for not speaking English before continuing to make derisive comments about Prophet Muhammad.
