[JewishInsider] Daniel Davis, a senior fellow at the Koch-backed Defense Priorities think tank, said that U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza was a strategic and moral mistake
Daniel Davis, a senior fellow at the isolationist Defense Priorities think tank with a record of strident criticism of Israel, has been tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence, three sources with knowledge of the selection told Jewish Insider. Davis has also lambasted U.S. support for the war in Gaza as a moral and strategic mistake.
He has opposed military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and suggested that it is only U.S. and Israeli policy and actions that are pushing Iran toward pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Three sources told JI that Davis, a retired military officer and early critic of the Afghanistan war, has been offered and accepted the position of deputy DNI for mission integration, one of the top jobs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and is waiting on the completion of his background check.
The mission integration role “serves as the DNI’s principal advisor on all aspects of intelligence,” according to the DNI website, and does not require Senate confirmation.
Davis joins a growing series of appointees in key positions across a number of national security agencies who fall far outside of the mainstream on Israel and Middle East policy, several of whom, including Michael DiMino, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, and Dan Caldwell, a Pentagon senior advisor, are also alumni of the Koch-linked Defense Priorities.
As recently as Jan. 12, Davis called U.S. support for the war in Gaza a mistake.
“On a practical level, we give away enormous leverage and credibility globally to hold *anyone* accountable for acts of w[a]nton violence, bc we not merely turn a blind eye to it, we cheer it on and supply the means to do more,” Davis wrote on X. “On a moral level this is a stain on our character as a nation, as a culture, that will not soon go away.”
Davis has suggested Israel is pursuing “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza and compared Gaza to a “prison.”
He has argued that the conflict did not begin on Oct. 7, 2023, with the Hamas attacks, echoing narratives that seek to push blame for the attack and the ensuing war on Israel.
“Let me say before anyone else brings it up: to those who would scream ‘October 7th!’ let me reply. The history of this conflict did not begin on that day. In the summer PRIOR to 10/7, the IDF was on a brutal fight against Palestinians,” Davis wrote. “And of course this goes back *decades* of repression and the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip being effectively incarcerated, with limited or no freedoms, and no path to a future and a hope.”
Davis shared an article claiming that casualties in Gaza are 40% higher than those reported by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, and lambasted “Western skeptics who ridiculed the Palestinian health ministry.”
Those skeptics would include the former director of national intelligence under the Biden administration, who said that the administration did not trust or rely on that data.
In an episode of his YouTube show in January, he described the Oct. 7 attack as “in some regards convenient” for Israel to give it a justification for it to begin military operations in Gaza.
He has also accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “playing the U.S. like a cheap fiddle,” and complained in January that incoming Trump administration officials were supportive of Israeli positions on the conflict.
In December 2024, Davis lambasted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for calling to cut off federal funds from universities that allow antisemitic protests, accusing Cruz of attempting to silence any protests, peaceful or otherwise, that criticize Netanyahu’s policies.
“Where is [your] moral outrage at the Israeli gov that continues to kill kids and other civilians without remorse or military necessity? Where is even a tiny bit of concern for the Palestinian *Christians* who are also killed in Gaza and the West Bank?” Davis continued. “Where is [your] passionate defense of the Bill of Rights for American citizens and students to give even full throated defense of issues [you] oppose, like the indiscriminate killing of the most vulnerable segment of the Palestinian population in Gaza?”
He called Cruz’s posture “as unAmerican as anything has ever been done.”
In a Jan. 20 tweet about the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Davis said that “it will take deft diplomacy by the Israeli and American governments to repair the enormous damage done by the outgoing U.S. Administration’s blanket support for Netanyahu’s war.”
He has said repeatedly that the “wanton destruction” of the Gaza Strip by Israel had created more Hamas fighters than existed prior to the war, and argued that there is no military solution to the situation in Gaza and that Israel was not serious about cease-fire negotiations.
He also strongly opposed Israeli plans to expand operations into Lebanon, which have since successfully degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities and eliminated most of its leadership.
Davis criticized President Donald Trump’s expressions of support for attacks on Iran’s nuclear program and denied that Iran poses a threat to the United States, asserting that it is only a “marginal regional power.”
“I don’t know who Trump has hired for his advisor, who’s giving him such absurd advice, but hitting the nuclear facilities of Iran is far more dangerous and difficult than what he believes,” Davis said in October 2024. “The ramifications could be terrible for us and for Israel.”
Davis has advanced the view that U.S. and Israeli policies and actions are forcing Iran’s hand toward hostile action, including nuclearization, and titled the Dec. 20 episode of his YouTube show “Quit Shoving Iran Towards Developing Nukes.”
“Iran is not a threat to the United States,” Davis said. “The only way that Iran can be a real problem for the U.S. is if we get stupider and push them beyond a point to where they feel like their only hope of self-defense from being the next victim of a regime change war … is to get a nuclear weapon.”
He claimed that U.S. and Israeli policy “continues to shove them headlong into a direction where the only thing they can do to defend themselves is to have a nuclear weapon. If we want to prevent that outcome, all we have to do is stop shoving them in that direction. Give them any reason at all to think they don’t have to fear a regime-change operation from us.”
Davis expressed support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as a viable option to “incentivize Iran to agree to a path of restraint” and said that those who pulled out of it were seeking war and ultimately pushed Iran in a counterproductive direction. The previous Trump administration deemed Iran to be in violation of the agreement and left it.
He appeared to be particularly angered by, and posted repeatedly about, the Israeli attack on an Iranian facility in Syria in 2024, killing members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He also criticized Israel’s alleged assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Davis argued that the Iranian regime’s subsequent missile attack on Israel in April 2024 cannot “b[e] described as ‘unjustified,’” and suggested that the U.S. should not come to Israel’s aid if war broke out with Iran.
“It was reckless and put the US at risk,” Davis said. “We dare not get drawn into a war of Israel’s choice [with] Iran. That’s their sovereign decision to make, but it is not America’s to wage for them.”
He criticized world leaders who, after the Iranian missile attack, called on Iran and its proxies to cease their attacks on Israel, adding, “How about condemning Israel for the highly provocative, illegal act of destroying another nation’s embassy? It’s like we’ve all gone mad…”
Following Israel’s attack on Iran’s air defense systems in late 2024, Davis celebrated that the attack had been limited in scope and warned that a more substantial attack could have had “catastrophic” consequences for both the U.S. and Israel.
Davis has also demanded that the U.S. immediately withdraw all of its troops from Syria, and questioned the positive impacts that the fall of the Assad regime would have. Davis has argued against attempting to forge relations with the new Syrian government, given its ties to terrorism.
And he said that the Houthis in Yemen are striking Israel “because you went after the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip,” adding that Israel will “have to come to some sort of political accommodation with the Houthis.”
Davis has also been critical of U.S. support for Ukraine.
Davis, who hosts a YouTube show, the “Daniel Davis Deep Dive,” with a deep library of content, has repeatedly brought on political scientist John Mearsheimer as a guest commentator. Mearsheimer is the author of The Israel Lobby, a book some have described as antisemitic for its claims about Israel and the pro-Israel community’s alleged influence on U.S. foreign policy.
Other guests have included anti-Israel former British Member of Parliament George Galloway, who has been accused of antisemitism and defended Hamas’ rule of Gaza as legitimate, and retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, who has also been accused of antisemitism, and is seen as a major advocate for the Russian regime’s positions on the war in Ukraine.
Davis has suggested on his show that a pro-Israel consensus in American media makes it politically difficult to express any criticism of Israel, and that such pro-Israel narratives actually hurt Israel’s international standing.
| Update from the Times of Israel at 6:30 p.m. ET: |
Trump administration drops planned appointment of Israel critic to key intelligence post
Tulsi Gabbard, US President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, has decided not to appoint a harsh critic of Israel to a key intelligence post, the Jewish Insider and New York Times report.
Gabbard’s decision not to name Daniel Davis as her deputy came after news of the planned appointment was met with criticism in light of his comments on Israel, which include saying that America’s support for Israeli operations in Gaza against Hamas is a “strategic and moral mistake” and opposing a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
According to the New York Times, the position that Gabbard was considering Davis for is responsible for the daily presidential briefing.
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