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For Immediate Release
October, 19 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7413 5566,After hours: +44 7778 472 126,Email:,[email protected]
Gaza: Fears of Further Bloodshed as Israel Adopts 'Zero Tolerance' Policy
Fears of escalating bloodshed are rising ahead of planned protests in Gaza later today after Israeli authorities announced a "zero tolerance" policy towards demonstrations along the Israel/Gaza fence, said Amnesty International.
The organization is calling on the Israeli government to rein in its armed forces, which have routinely used unnecessary or excessive force during Gaza's weekly "Great March of Return" demonstrations.
LONDON
Fears of escalating bloodshed are rising ahead of planned protests in Gaza later today after Israeli authorities announced a "zero tolerance" policy towards demonstrations along the Israel/Gaza fence, said Amnesty International.
The organization is calling on the Israeli government to rein in its armed forces, which have routinely used unnecessary or excessive force during Gaza's weekly "Great March of Return" demonstrations.
"Given Israeli forces' horrific track record of using deadly force against Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza, as well as journalists, medics and others, the announcement of a 'zero tolerance' policy is deeply alarming," said Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.
The exact details of what "zero tolerance" means have not been disclosed, but there are fears it will lead to more Palestinian deaths along the Gaza/Israel border.
"There are serious fears that this policy will further sanction the use of deadly force against unarmed protesters during today's demonstrations, and that Israeli forces will be given carte blanche authorization to carry out large-scale, unlawful killings escalating the bloodshed. Israel has repeatedly used lethal force unnecessarily and excessively against unarmed protesters in shameless violation of international law," said Saleh Higazi.
Protesters are due to gather today for "Great March of Return" protests, which have taken place every Friday since 30 March demanding the lifting of the 11-year unlawful blockade on Gaza and the return of Palestinian refugees to their villages and towns.
Since the protests began, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 30 children, and thousands of others have been injured.
The new Israeli government policy announcement came on Thursday 18 October after the Israeli security cabinet met in Jerusalem to discuss their response to a rocket from Gaza that hit and damaged a residential home in Beersheba in southern Israel. Amnesty International has consistently condemned attacks by Palestinian armed groups on civilians and civilian objects. According to Israeli media reports, Palestinian demonstrators will have to remain farther away from the border fence, otherwise soldiers will open fire. Israeli authorities have also stated that incendiary balloons and kites launched from Gaza will be met with greater force.
Israel's Housing Minister and former Commander of the Israeli army's Southern Command, Yoav Gallant, was quoted in Israeli media stating that "the rules of the game are about to change", hinting that Israel will be stepping up its response against armed groups in the Gaza strip and raising fears of full-scale military action.
"The three armed conflicts between Israel and Hamas have had catastrophic consequences for the population of Gaza, which continues to suffer from 11 years of living under a brutal blockade," said Saleh Higazi.
"It is now time the international community shows 'zero tolerance' towards Israel's flagrant contempt for Palestinian lives and disregard for its obligations under international law."
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
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Gabbard Fires Intel Officials After Memo Counters Trump Lies About Migrants Sent to El Salvador Prison
Critics called the ousters "ominous" and warned that "an intelligence service will not protect you from real-life threats if its members get fired for not lying."
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Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial director of national intelligence, is generating alarm this week for firing two top officials after a memo contradicting the administration's claims about deported migrants was made public.
As Fox News first reported Tuesday, Gabbard fired Mike Collins, acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, and moved the NIC from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
As The Hilldetailed:
Collins has spent nearly three decades in the intelligence community and has served as chief of staff for the CIA's deputy director. He started his career as an analyst focused on East Asia.
Langan-Riekhof also has more than 30 years of experience in the intelligence community, including as an expert on the Middle East. The ODNI previously listed her as an exceptional analyst. She also previously served as director of the Strategic Futures Group at the National Intelligence Council.
While an ODNI spokesperson told The Hill that "the director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community," critics framed the firings as "the DEFINITION of politicizing intelligence."
"I am concerned about the apparent removal of senior leadership at the National Intelligence Council without any explanation except vague accusations made in the media," Congressman Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, toldThe Washington Post. "Absent evidence to justify the firings, the workforce can only conclude that their jobs are contingent on producing analysis that is aligned with the president's agenda, rather than truthful and apolitical."
The NIC leaders were fired after last week's release of an NIC memo confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies never agreed with Trump's claim that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. The April 7 document states that "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States."
Although, as the Post noted, "it was unclear what, if any, direct role Collins or Langan-Riekhof had in drafting the assessment," its release provoked pushback from Gabbard, who said last week that it was "outrageous that as President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some in the media remain intent on twisting and manipulating intelligence assessments to undermine the president's agenda to keep the American people safe."
Trump has used dubious claims about Maduro controlling the gang to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act to send hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center as part of his mass deportation agenda.
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on social media Wednesday: "Gabbard is purging intelligence officials over a report that the Trump administration finds politically inconvenient. Whatever the administration is trying to protect... it's not our national security."
Other critics called Gabbard's moves "ominous" and warned that "an intelligence service will not protect you from real-life threats if its members get fired for not lying."
The U.S. intelligence community (IC) "provides analysis independent of policy preferences," said James Madison University professor and former CIA analyst Stephen Marrin. "When those in power do not want to hear inconvenient facts and unwanted interpretation and punish messengers that provide it, that undermines the reason the IC was created in the first place."
Jonathan Panikoff, a former career U.S. intelligence officer who is now a director in the Atlantic Council's Middle East Program, said that "having spent five years working at the NIC, I can personally attest the [organization] is the heartbeat of apolitical U.S. all-source analysis, traditionally drawing the best of the IC's analysts together to tackle and produce assessments on the hardest issues. Anything that reduces its independence because policymakers don't like the independent conclusions it reaches, is the definition of politicization they are decrying. Mike and Maria are unbelievable leaders and IC professionals, not political actors."
Eric Brewer, who also worked for NIC, expressed full agreement with Panikoff's "excellent comments" and issued his own warning.
"This is a big deal. The result will be an IC less willing to tell the president and other leaders what they need to know rather than what they want to hear. America will be less secure because of it," Brewer said. "The professionals in the IC can withstand a lot, and will no doubt do their utmost to continue to provide objective assessments. But this act is blatant politicization and will have a chilling effect."
The memo that seemingly led to the NIC firings was revealed as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Lauren Harper, the group's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, shared the Post's reporting about the ousters on social media Wednesday along with an observation.
"The director of national intelligence's FOIA website (which has reappeared after the entire site was briefly down) no longer has a reading room of released documents or links to its FOIA regulations which, were we to be picky, violates the EFOIA amendments of 1996," Harper highlighted. "Amazing timing."
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In a misleading announcement, the EPA said Wednesday that it will "keep maximum contaminant levels" (MCLs) for two per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—PFOA and PFOS—as part of an effort to "provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water."
However, the EPA plans to scrap MCLs for four other forever chemicals: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
"These four chemicals are the ones currently in use because industry developed them to replace PFOA and PFOS, so they are the chemicals most likely to increase contamination in the future," explained former senior EPA water official Betsy Southerland in a statement issued by the Environmental Protection Network on Wednesday.
"It is incredibly inefficient to regulate them years after the treatment has been installed only for PFOA and PFOS," Southerland added. "[EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin's announcement on PFAS drinking water standards ensures that America's children will be drinking PFAS for another decade while he slows drinking water and wastewater PFAS treatment for years."
The EPA just announced its decision on PFAS, toxic forever chemicals, that reverses course on most of a crucial public health rule from just last year. We need more action, not less, to protect Americans from PFAS.
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— NRDC (@nrdc.org) May 14, 2025 at 7:34 AM
The EPA also pushed back the deadline for compliance with a Biden administration rule finalized last year aimed at ensuring polluters pay forever chemical cleanup costs, from 2029 to 2031. Earlier this week, the EPA said it is delaying a key PFAS reporting rule by one year.
"This is a betrayal of public health at the highest level," Environmental Working Group president Ken Cook said in response to Wednesday's announcement. "You can't make America healthy while allowing toxic chemicals to flow freely from our taps. The EPA is caving to chemical industry lobbyists and pressure by the water utilities, and in doing so, it's sentencing millions of Americans to drink contaminated water for years to come."
"The cost of PFAS pollution will fall on ordinary people, who will pay in the form of polluted water and more sickness, more suffering, and more deaths from PFAS-related diseases," Cook added.
"Zeldin's announcement on PFAS drinking water standards ensures that America's children will be drinking PFAS for another decade."
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, "including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards," according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which added that "the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems."
Forever chemicals—so called because some of them take up to 1,000 years to break down in the environment—have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
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NRDC senior strategic director of health Erik Olson said Wednesday that "with a stroke of the pen, the EPA is making a mockery of the Trump administration's promise to deliver clean water for Americans."
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"With a stroke of the pen, the EPA is making a mockery of the Trump administration's promise to deliver clean water for Americans."
Kelly Moser, senior attorney and leader of the Water Program at the Southern Environmental Law Center—which successfully sued the industrial chemicals giant Chemours to stop PFAS contamination in North Carolina—said Wednesday that "when this administration talks about deregulation, this is what they mean—allowing toxic chemicals in drinking water at the request of polluters."
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U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez has led calls for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign for weeks, condemning her prominent role in overseeing the Trump administration's virulently anti-immigrant agenda—but on Wednesday she took a rare in-person opportunity to once again call on the far-right Republican to step down.
"For weeks and weeks we've been waiting for Secretary Noem to come before our committee," said Ramirez (D-Ill.) in a video she posted online ahead of the House Homeland Security Committee hearing. "I'm not going to sit there and just let her lie under oath about all the horrifying things that she's doing... I say enough is enough, and in just a few minutes, I'm going to say that to her face, because it's about damn time that person, that secretary, resigns."
Ramirez began her remarks in the hearing by asking Noem a rapid-fire set of questions, clarifying whether the secretary believes the judicial and legislative branches of government are co-equal branches—facts that have been disregarded by the Trump administration as it has flouted a federal judge's order to stop expelling Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, moved to shutter federal agencies created by Congress, and canceled funding appropriated by Congress.
Despite Noem's claim in the hearing that she and the administration respect bedrock laws meant to maintain checks and balances in the federal government, Ramirez noted in the hearing that Noem has "repeatedly disregarded the law" since being confirmed as homeland security secretary.
As Ramirez said:
You closed offices established in law, including the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman.
You canceled contracts for programs authorized in law, including shelter and services programs, and citizenship and integration grants.
You obstructed and roughed up members of this committee as they conducted congressional oversight.
You redirected funds to terrorize our communities, create taxpayer-funded political propaganda campaigns, and hold sick, disrespectful press conferences in my state, where let me be clear, you are not welcome.
You corruptly used emergency authority to avoid procurement to make [President Donald] Trump's private prison donors richer by directing $45 billion to them for expanded [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detention centers.
You defunded work to address real threats to the homeland, while you pursue the college newspaper editor, labor leaders, and a Harvard scientist who failed to declare frog embryos at the airport.
Ramirez said she found it "laughable" when Noem affirmed that she swore to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution when she took her oath of office.
"You don't behave like someone who takes that oath seriously," said Ramirez. "We don't live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. Trump's will is not the guiding doctrine of the nation, and our country is not a playground for his and your twisted authoritarian fantasies."
"YOU have betrayed the sacred fundamentals of your oath; YOU are not fit to hold the office, and I, again—to your face—demand your resignation and place that request on the record," Ramirez concluded.
The congresswoman also sent a letter to Noem reiterating the demand for her resignation and condemning Department of Homeland Security officials for unlawfully raiding homes and expelling "immigrants, legal residents, and citizens alike," including a number of children.
She also reiterated Sen. Chris Murphy's (D-Conn.) concern, expressed at a hearing last week, that Noem's department is "out of control" and is rapidly "running out of money to execute the horrors we are witnessing."
Noem is also "running out of excuses for [her] despicable actions," Ramirez wrote.
Podcast host Jim Stewartson said that with Ramirez's questioning, she addressed "the Trump regime in its full criminal, anti-democratic, illiberal horror."
"Delia Ramirez finally cuts through the bullshit and lays it all on the table," he said.
At Wednesday's hearing, Noem suggested that under the U.S. Constitution, Trump has the authority to suspend habeas corpus, an idea that's been floated by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Rights groups have filed numerous habeas corpus petitions to challenge the detentions of foreign students including Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Badar Khan Suri; Öztürk and Suri have been released from detention in recent days.
The Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus, under which people have the right to challenge their detention, only "in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."
The administration has pushed the idea that the U.S. is facing an "invasion" by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, and has used that claim to expel hundreds of migrants to El Salvador.
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