The New York Times: The nomination of one of the war critics of Gaza for the position of US intelligence

The New York Times reported, quoting familiar people, on Wednesday evening, that the US National Intelligence Director, Toulcy Gabbard, decided not to appoint one of the Israeli war critics to the Gaza Strip, in a high position to provide daily intelligence to the president, after the proposal to appoint him to discontent with some members of President Trump coalition.

According to the newspaper, Gabbard canceled its proposal regarding the appointment of Daniel Davis as deputy director of task integration, after he was undergoing a security examination to take over the position that supervises the preparation of the president’s daily summary, a summary of intelligence assessments submitted to the White House and senior policymakers. A senior US administration official told “The New York Times” that Gabbard canceled her proposal after this angered the militant conservatives in Congress.

Davis is working at the “Defense Priorities” Foundation, which criticized US military intervention in the Middle East, and has supported President Donald Trump’s efforts to reach an immediate ceasefire in the war at Ukraine. Opponents of his appointment decision believe that his skepticism in the Gaza war may weaken the Trump administration’s support for Israel.

When President Donald Trump was offering his plan to seize the Gaza Strip and displace its population from it, Davis said that the output of the residents from the Strip would be a “ethnic cleansing.” Last January, social media wrote that American support for the Israeli war on Gaza would be “a stigma on our identity as a nation, as a culture, and it will not go away soon,” as he has repeatedly spoke about the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza. Although Gabbard did not comment much about the war on Gaza, Davis’s positions, including his questioning of American support for the Ukrainian war effort and his concerns about the “consequences of the overthrow of the Assad regime”, are compatible with its opinions.

The cancellation of Davis highlights the changes in the foreign policy of the new administration and tension among Trump supporters over the United States’ support for Israel, as the Trump administration has appointed more strict Republicans, such as Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Michael Walt, National Security Adviser, and other officials, including Gabbard. A former CIA operations officer Mark Bolimaruboulos told “The New York Times” that Davis’s positions were outside the prevailing ideological current of the Republican Party, adding “his public criticism of Israel and its opposition to any military action against Iran opposing the current administration policy.”