A former adviser to Barack Obama said that killing 4,000 Palestinian children “wasn’t enough” during a racist and islamophobic rant to a food vendor.
In videos shared on social media, Stuart Seldowitz can be heard asking someone off-camera whether they raped their “daughter like Muhammad did”.
“Muhammad, your prophet ... He was a rapist,” he said.
Mr Seldowitz was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under President Obama, a senior political officer and was deputy director in the US State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003.
Most recently he served as foreign affairs chair for Gotham Government Relations, which cut ties with him following the release of the videos.
In the viral clips, Mr Seldowitz appeared to be speaking to a man working inside a food van in New York City.
In one video, Mr Seldowitz can be heard saying he is going to “put up big signs here that say ‘This guy believes in Hamas’”.
The vendor then told Mr Seldowitz he was an American citizen, to which he asked how he became a citizen and called him a “terrorist”.
“You support killing little children. You’re a terrible person,” Mr Seldowitz said
The vendor replied: “You kill children, not me.”