An oil analyst with Stamford-based Freepoint Commodities has been fired from his job after he trended on social media this weekend in a video showing him engaging in antisemitic harassment of a Jewish man while covering up posters that called attention to Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.
The video was shot on the evening of Nov. 9 at the corner of West 68th St. and Riverside Blvd. in Manhattan, where posters showing the Israeli hostage were plastered to a lamppost. In the video, a man is covering the posters with homemade signs that include “Israel is an Apartheid State and Commits Genocide” and “Occupiers Face Consequences.” When the man shooting the video asks the poster hanger to identify himself, he raises an extended middle finger to the camera while a woman abruptly appears and makes scatological remarks while holding her cell phone up to shoot a video of the confrontation.
The man shooting the video identifies himself as a Jewish American and the couple tell him that he should “go back to your country” – the man waves his hand in a shooing manner to dismiss the video shooter. The woman claims that “you don’t want my country to exist,” stating that “Palestine is my country.” The woman then uses more foul language and accuses all Israelis of being rapists while accusing the Jewish man of bestiality.
Shortly after the video went on X (formerly Twitter) and began to go viral, the couple in the video were identified by conservative journalist Andy Ngo as “husband and wife Kurush Mistry and Shailja Gupta” – Ngo ran additional photographs of Mistry and Gupta together and separately that affirms his findings.
Mistry was identified as an oil analyst for Freepoint Commodities, where he has been employed for 14 years, and Gupta was identified as founder and owner of Box Office Pocket, which creates merchandise for Bollywood films. While Gupta claimed “Palestine is my country,” both she and Mistry were identified by media analyst Sonam Mahajan as Indian nationals.
The identity of the man who shot the video has not been made public. The incident has been reported in several Indian media outlets, with OpIndia claiming “Gupta has also been deeply Hinduphobic” based on 2021 social media posts where she described the Indian festival of Rakshabandhan as a “sexist holiday,” a “Goldmine for child labour” and “yet another opportunity to pivot the emotional festival into Export Cash Cow.”
In a response to a Business Journal inquiry, Freepoint Commodities issued a statement that said: “Freepoint is committed to fostering a culture of mutual respect and tolerance. We welcome the diversity of views and opinions held by our employees, but Freepoint does not tolerate discrimination and hate speech directed against any group. We are aware of the recent antisemitic incident reported on social media, and the individual involved is no longer associated with Freepoint.”
Two Indian Americans, Shailja Gupta and Kurush Mistry, harass and abuse a Jewish American in Manhattan, ask him to go back to Israel.
The woman goes so far as to identify herself as a Palestinian and accuses all Israelis of being rapists, claiming she has already proven so in… pic.twitter.com/ismseIIyUq
— Sonam Mahajan (@AsYouNotWish) November 11, 2023
Photo: Screen capture of the man identified as Kurush Mistry covering up posters of the Israeli hostages on a Manhattan lamppost.
