A former advisor to President Barack Obama was caught on camera Nov. 21 making Islamaphobic remarks to a muslim street vendor in New York City this week.

The video has garnered more than 10 million views after it was posted to X on Tuesday afternoon. The video posted on X shows Stuart Seldowitz, who was a national security advisor to former President Obama, making racist remarks at a halal food vendor in New York City.

“If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn’t enough. It’s not my fault you pray to a criminal,” Seldowitz said said to the vendor, who repeatedly asked him to leave because he was working.

More than 13,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the United Nations. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas’s attacks stands at about 1,200.

Seldowitz, who is a three-time winner of the State Department’s Superior Honour Award, was also filmed harassing a street vendor in what appeared to be a separate incident, where he was wearing different clothes and it appeared to be a different time of day.

Seldowitz worked in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003 and then served as Acting Director of the National Security Council South Asia Directorate from 2009 to 2011 for the Obama administration.

“Do you speak Arabic, the language of the Koran? The holy Koran,” he also said, appearing to mock the Muslim religious text. “That’s why you’re selling food in a food cart, because you’re ignorant, but you should learn English. It’ll help you when they deport you back to Egypt.”

Commenters on social media are responding to the videos of Seldowitz comparing his harassing language to U.S. government support of Israel in the war.

“This is the Former Obama national security advisor, Stuart Seldowitz. When these are the people shaping US foreign policy then it makes sense why the US has the blood of Muslims in their hands. They are proud of their hatred for islam and their crimes against the Muslim world,” said X user @Abo_Mradd.

This harassment comes at a moment of “unprecedented” rising Islamophobic sentiment among Americans in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said reports of anti-Muslim harassment have increased 216%.

CAIR received more than 1,200 reports of anti-Muslim incidents from Oct. 7 to Nov. 4, which the organization said represents a 216% increase in reports compared to last year.

In the last six weeks, Muslim American victims of violent hate crimes have made national headlines, including a 6-year-old Palestinian stabbed 36 times and killed in Chicago, the fatal assault of Talat J. Khan, a Muslim pediatrician in Texas, an Arab Muslim Stanford University student was sent to the hospital after a hit and run on campus and threats to people wearing Palestinian clothing in public.

“We want to emphasize that these incidents are not occurring in isolation, but they’re actually connected to the ongoing violence in Gaza,” said CAIR research and advocacy coordinator Farah Afify in response to the Seldowitz video. “When politicians and media networks use and uplift Islamophobic rhetoric in order to justify the ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli government, that lends itself directly to Islamophobic sentiment and therefore anti-Muslim incidents in the United States.”

While the violence being reported now represents a deviation, there was still a regular stream of anti-Muslim hate crime in the United States. In 2021, there were over 2,700 anti-Muslim hate crimes reported in the United States. Despite a report earlier this year marking decreased incidents of anti-Muslim hate, CAIR said the more than 200% increase from this year compared to last year is alarming.

Afify said anti-Muslim hate is directly connected to American lawmakers who have embraced Islamophobic rhetoric. On Nov 7, during the Florida legislative session, Florida Rep. Michelle Salzman, who shouted “all of them” in response to a rhetorical question from Rep. Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville) who asked, “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough [to call for a ceasefire]?”

In the clip, which has racked up 11.9 million views on X, a heckler can be heard shouting, “all of them.” The woman was later identified as Salzman.

This isn’t new behavior. In 2021, United States Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) made a joke about Rep. Ilhan Omar being (D-Minnesota) mistaken for a terrorist in a Capitol elevator. Boebert later issued an apology.

At the same time, reports of anti-semitic hate in the US are also on the rise. The Anti-Defamation League, an American Jewish advocacy group and one of the oldest anti-hate groups in in America, documented a staggering 832 antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment between Oct. 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, and Nov. 7, which represents an increase of 316% over the same period last year.

The US Justice Dept. has also reportedly been taking notice of the spike in hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim individuals since Oct. 7 and says it is taking measures to “protect and assure” those communities. In addition to meeting with Jewish leaders about threats to Jewish university students, the department  has opened a hate crime investigation in the case of the Muslim child stabbed to death in Chicago.

The fallout of Seldowitz’s racist rant

Gotham Government Relations, a Manhattan-based lobbying group for which Seldowitz served as the new foreign affairs chain, cut ties with him Tuesday after his remarks went viral that afternoon.

Seldowitz told the New York Times Wednesday the conversation started after the vendor told him he supported Hamas. His claims are currently not confirmed and nNone of those statements from the vendor were shown in videos posted online,, and the vendor’s support for Hamas has not been confirmed, the NYT reported.

In an apology shared with City & State New York following the backlash from the videos, Seldowitz said he didn’t consider himself an “Islamophobic guy.”

“If I had to do it all over again, I would not have raised the religious aspect,” he told City & State. “I’ve spoken up for equal treatment of Muslims on numerous occasions with numerous different people. But you know, in the heat of the moment, I said things that probably I shouldn’t have said.”

Afify said the interaction between Seldowitz and the food vendor is not unique when compared to the reports of anti-Muslim harassment and violence the organization has responded to this year.

She said the proliferation of this type of behavior is even more reason for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“I would emphasize that it is not a unique example, but it is similar to the kinds of anti-Muslim rhetoric incidents that we’ve seen across the country,” Afify said. “It speaks to the need for the Biden administration to come out and call for a lasting ceasefire in order to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians abroad and to protect the lives and well being of Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in the United States.”