If Stuart Seldowitz completes the program, the charges he faces for berating a food truck vendor would be dropped, prosecutors said. A Muslim group called it a “sweetheart deal.”

A former State Department employee charged with a hate crime in November after he harassed a halal food vendor in Manhattan, calling him a “terrorist,” may have his charges dismissed if he completes a 26-week anti-bias course and fulfills other requirements, according to prosecutors.

At a court appearance, Manhattan prosecutors said that if the man, Stuart Seldowitz, completed the program through the organization Queens Counseling for Change, had no new arrests and did not violate a protective order, they would ask that his charges be dropped. Mr. Seldowitz agreed, according to prosecutors.

However, Afaf Nasher, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York, said in a statement on that “light punishments are a slap in the face to the victims.”

Video recordings of the encounters between Mr. Seldowitz and the vendor spread online as tensions intensified between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups after the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7. In New York, where demonstrations about the conflict have become a near daily occurrence, those tensions have been particularly high.

The number of hate crimes logged in the city during October was more than double that of the previous October. Last year through mid-December, the Manhattan district attorney’s office initiated 111 hate crime cases, compared with 92 in 2022 and 81 in 2021, according to a spokeswoman.

The charges against Mr. Seldowitz were brought after the vendor, whom the police identified as a 24-year-old man, told officers that he had been approached by another man who made Islamophobic statements several times while he was working on the Upper East Side, causing him to feel “afraid or annoyed.”

New Yorkers from across the city came together to support halal cart operator Mohammed Hussein after watching the hateful attacks by Seldowitz, with city councilwoman Julie Menin stressing that “hate and harassment have no place in our community.”In several videos, Mr. Seldowitz can be seen taking pictures of the vendor, berating him and telling him: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.” Mr. Seldowitz also threatens to send pictures of the vendor to “friends in immigration.”

Mr. Seldowitz had a decades-long government career in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including as acting director for the National Security Council’s South Asia Directorate and a post in the State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.

Source: The New York Times