A bit less of a Kahanist than National Union MK Michael Ben Ari, a bit less of a garbler than Likud MK Yariv Levin and a bit less pompous than Likud MK Ofir Akunis, Likud MK Danny Danon will go far. He's a member of the ruling party and is definitely going to show all those leftists and Arabs. He has already threatened them once: The party is over. Yesterday he acted once again to implement his threat. Among Danon's arguments in favor of the law to investigate leftist organizations, which he initiated and which was discussed yesterday in the Knesset, his most persuasive argument stands out: "These are political organizations that are outside the consensus."
Perhaps one should have restrained oneself at such an embarrassingly disgraceful display of democratic ignorance by an elected legislator who thinks only consensus organizations have a place in a free society. It's also possible to ignore his vain threats against the human rights organizations, perhaps the last keepers of the flame in this society whose face is becoming distorted with dizzying speed. Ostensibly, one could even ignore the existence of this Likud backbencher, but little Danny Danon will be big, the sugar of the Israeli right. So it's better to pay attention to him now rather than later.
The first MK to boast his own iPhone app, high-tech maven that he is, he doesn't know a thing about democracy. Not a thing. He doesn't even begin to understand that democracy is designed to ensure the rights of the minority, precisely the minority that deviates from the consensus. Danon has also defined the Boycott Law as "a lesson in democracy," a fact that says something about his world and a lot about the level of civics lessons in Israel's schools.
An examination of his parliamentary activity - his first term, and already so much noise, clangor and damage - draws a faithful portrait of the new Israeli right, which is no longer ashamed to present an unvarnished nationalist and anti-democratic ideology. In this respect, Danon's contribution to the political discourse is important: Enough with the euphemisms, dump the deceit, down with the pseudo-democracy under which which one can be both a proponent of the occupation and a democrat, an oppressor of minorities and a liberal, a nationalist and enlightened, the way Likud "moderates" are trying to be. True, Danon is making Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu look like a moderate and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz look even better, but Danon is Likud's 3G. He's already chairman of World Likud.
A graduate of the usual party hack track, a Jewish Agency emissary in America and a parliamentary aide, look at what he has been busy with over the past two and a half years. As chairman of the Knesset Children's Rights Committee, he asserts that the Palestinian children who are throwing stones are doing this for money. Fighter for children's rights that he is, Danon said this after the intentional running over of two children by a settler, as a way to justify it. The "left's bleeding hearts," he says, demonstrate only out of greed for money. And more about the color of money: He has demanded that playwright Shmuel Hasfari return "all the money he has received from the state." Why? Because Hasfari was in favor of the boycott of Ariel.
Danon got a law passed: Security prisoners who have been pardoned and have committed any sort of offense will be returned to prison without trial. And really, why is a trial needed? He also called for throwing Balad MK Hanin Zuabi in prison, with or without trial. As for the Palestinians who are already there, he has demanded the cessation of their visits and "benefits."
Danon has also been the guests of the loonies of the American right - Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck - during their visits to Israel. Maybe he wants to be like them. He's ambitious. Observe him in his campaigns in the settlements against the construction freeze, accompanied by no fewer than three media advisers. In this way he has become the Likud's right fringe, a good omen for a career that is gradually taking off.
His predecessor Joseph McCarthy also didn't rise to the top quickly. McCarthy was an obscure senator from Wisconsin who made dull speeches about housing problems and sugar rationing until one evening he pulled out the black list of Communists working in the U.S. State Department, and the rest is history.
Like Danon, McCarthy built his whole career on investigative committees, exactly like the one Danon tried to establish and appoint himself head of yesterday. Now find the differences. There aren't any.
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