Israel: the view from the (far) right

The deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, Danny Danon, appeared on my radar only recently, after he co-sponsored the country’s recent “Boycott Bill”, a piece of legislation that was widely attacked as anti-democratic both at home and by Israel’s traditional supporters in the US.

Danon was, and is, unapologetic about his action, calling critics “hypocrites” and seeing no problem in a law that rides roughshod over one of the bedrock principles of justice – the presumption of innocence.

Since Danon is supported by some as a possible future prime minister of Israel and as a standard-bearer for the country’s right-wing and settler groups, it seemed logical to include him in the list of guests for “Talk To Al Jazeera”.

When I sat down with him in Jerusalem last week, he told me he intends to pursue even more measures to confront what he sees as Israel’s “enemies”, both within and without.

Indeed, during a long conversation, he constantly returned to the theme of enemies, to the point where I had to ask whether he had ever considered that he might be paranoid.

Hear his answer to that question, and his vision of the future of the people he calls “so-called Palestinians”, by watching Talk To Al Jazeera on Friday August 5th.

The show goes out at 08:30 GMT and 14:30 GMT.