Regarding Israel, Daniel Davis Spreads Nonsense On Stilts

Daniel Davis is a retired military man who has been a senior fellow at Defence Priorities, and was apparently almost appointed Deputy Director of Intelligence for Mission Integration. More on Davis can be found here: “Anti-Israel commentator tapped as a deputy director of national intelligence,” by Marc Rod, Jewish Insider, March 12, 2025:

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….

Goodness, Davis is obliquely suggesting that Israel may itself have deliberately encouraged the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas — how, exactly? — because, he says, that attack provided justification for the IDF entry into Gaza. Hamas has been at war with Israel, and carried out terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, ever since its founding in 1987. Israel already had all the justification it needed to bring the war home to Hamas in Gaza.

“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.”

The Israeli government does not “continue to kill kids and other civilians without remorse or military necessity.” This is a blood libel. The IDF makes tremendous efforts to save civilian lives by warning them, in several ways — dropping leaflets, sending text messages, making robocalls — which sites and buildings are about to be targeted. Davis feigns concern for the “Christians who are also killed in Gaza and the West Bank” by the IDF. But the IDF does not target Christians. Davis may be unaware that it is the pressure from hostile Muslims that has led Christians in Gaza to flee the Strip; their numbers have steadily decreased ever since Israel left. When Israel pulled out in 2005, there were 5,000 Christians in Gaza. Under rule by Hamas, their numbers have gone steadily down, and now they number fewer than 900. The same decline in the Christian population, though less dramatic than in Gaza, can be seen in those parts of Judea and Samaria that are under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

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.”

First, the Gaza war is not “Netanyahu’s war,” but rather, “Israel’s war.” The people of Israel are behind this most justified of wars; it is not, as Davis implies, an undertaking by some mad-dog bellicose leader. Second, the “enormous damage” done to infrastructure in Gaza is a direct result of Hamas’ policy of embedding its operatives, weapons, and rocket launchers in civilian buildings — schools, apartment houses, mosques, hospitals— which then become legitimate targets of attack. If much of Gaza lies in ruins, it is the result of Hamas’ policy of using so many civilian structures in which to hide both men, weapons, and Israeli hostages, and from which to target the soldiers of the IDF.

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.

Nonsense on stilts. There has not been any “wanton destruction” by the IDF in Gaza. See above for the discussion of all the ways that the IDF minimizes civilian casualties. It is that IDF effort that led West Point Professor John Spencer, professor of urban warfare at West Point, to conclude that “Israel has done more and implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military in the history of urban warfare.”