Halal food worker might soon be able to take legal action against the explicit and racist abuse after the attacker’s firm offered free representation

A New York political lobbying firm has offered to represent a halal street food vendor who was recently subjected to a sustained racist attack by one of its own consultants, a former state department official, in the latest encounter reflecting tension in the city over the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The Manhattan-based Gotham Government Relations firm said on Tuesday that it would cut all ties with Stuart Seldowitz, who worked in the US Department of State’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003 and later at the national security council during the Obama administration, after he was filmed harassing an Upper East Side street vendor.

In one widely shared video, Seldowitz is heard to ask the unidentified vendor: “Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” In another, he states: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough.”