Shane Bauer Profile picture
Former @motherjones. Author of “American Prison,” one of the NYT’s 10 best books. Writing a book on Americans in the Syrian war. Email me at smbauer1@gmail.com
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Mar 14 11 tweets 3 min read
The U.S. just announced sanctions against Neria Ben-Pazi and Moshe Sharvit, two Israeli settlers I recently wrote about for the New Yorker. These are two very dangerous men, but the sanctions conspicuously avoid targeting their Israeli state sponsors. Some thoughts and details:
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As I reported, Ben-Pazi was targeted by Israeli authorities in 2015 when he ran an outpost that sheltered Jewish terrorists. Then in 2019, after Netanyahu announced a plan to annex part of the West Bank, the state suddenly started backing him. newyorker.com/magazine/2024/…
Feb 29 17 tweets 5 min read
When I was in the West Bank settlers attacked olive pickers, saying they were Hamas agents. IDF soldiers used the same pretext to stop the harvest. One soldier told me picking olives was a “political act.” A thread on things I saw while reporting for The New Yorker: Olive groves have become dangerous. I went to one with @thabjouqa where a man had been killed a week earlier. IDF soldiers appeared on a hill and pulled weapons on us. I caught some of it on video. One cocked his rifle right after I turned the camera off. It was terrifying.
Jan 8, 2021 4 tweets 1 min read
I keep thinking about how, in 2016, it took me just one day to infiltrate multiple militias via Facebook. Then I drove to one group's temporary military base in the desert, the coordinates of which were posted on Facebook. These people plan everything in the open. They do that because they are so confident that they won't get into any trouble. In the five days I was undercover on their "base," I saw cops and border patrol praise them. They've been show since well before Trump that they have nothing to worry about.
Dec 12, 2019 4 tweets 1 min read
A couple things about this propaganda video: One of the guys is a neo-nazi who was kicked out of Rojava. The other had a mental break in Syria. He came back to the US and was homeless for a while. He eventually committed suicide. These are the sources used by Turkish state TV. I spoke to another YPG foreign fighter who lived with Kevin Howard when he did this video. He said he and Howard were offered a flight, a nice hotel, and payment to appear in this segment. Howard, recently out of homelessness, accepted. The other fighter declined.