By MATTI FRIEDMAN - TimesOfIsrael.com

That was the year Joseph Danon, a 29-year-old army reservist, was pursuing a Palestinian guerrilla cell in the Jordan Valley. When battle was joined, one of the Palestinians threw a grenade and Danon was hit by shrapnel. He emerged from a coma after several months, having suffered a serious head wound. He was rendered permanently deaf.

Many of Danny Danon's childhood memories are of serving as his father's interpreter at banks and government offices and of going on hikes across the country and then reporting back to their home in Ramat Gan, describing the routes and the landscapes to his father, once an avid hiker himself but now too infirm to come along.

"We would re-enact the hike at home," Danon said in a recent interview. "Despite his injury, he managed to get across the message of knowing the country and loving the country."

Danon began reading books about the underground groups that fought the British in pre-state Palestine, and learned the sites of battles from David and Goliath to the Yom Kippur War. That, he says, gave him a strong connection to the geography of Israel. Interpreting for his father, he said, "gave me the confidence to speak and argue and say what I think."

For the full article please click here

The Head of the Knesset's Aliyah, Absorption and Diaspora Committee, MK Danny Danon, has written to Ukraine's Ambassador in Israel, Hennadi Nadolenko, demanding that his country fight Islamist terrorism within its territory and provide protection to Jews from the anti-Semitic Svoboda party.

The Ukraine must cooperate with Israeli security bodies in order to defeat Muslim terror directed against Jews in the Ukraine and provide protection against a party that is reminiscent of Europe in its darkest hour, Danon said.

The murder of Jewish professor Leon Freifeld in Lviv is a symptom of Jewish insecurity in the country, he said, and the anti-Semitic party's entry into parliament indicates that the threat to Jews is a very tangible one.

Danon offered to hold an emergency discussion of the situation in the Knesset's Aliyah, Absorption and Diaspora Committee, in order to examine the actions of the Ukrainian government following the murder, and the actions that must be so that the rise of the anti-Semitic party does not lead to increased anti-Jewish violence.

"The State of Israel is responsible for the security of Jews throughout the world, and not just within the State of Israel," Danon noted. "Cooperation with the Ukrainians, like the cooperation that exists with France, will guarantee the personal security of over 300,000 Ukrainian Jews."

He asked the ambassador to provide him with information regarding the actions taken by the Ukrainian government to protect Jews in Ukraine.

For the full article please click here

Danon has accused Zoabi of having undermined Israel for participating in what he called the "terror flotilla" – the Mavi Marmara ship to Gaza that the IDF intercepted in May 2010. Israeli sea commandos were met with armed men aboard the top deck, and subsequently killed nine Turkish citizens while trying to gain control of the ship.

"We will not allow the appropriation of democracy in order to hurt the state from within," Danon, the head of the World Likud organization, said in a statement Wednesday. "Zoabi used her immunity in order to support a terrorist struggle aimed at killing Israeli soldiers. There is no room for someone like this in Israel's Knesset – her place is in a jail."

For the full article please click here

MK Danny Danon harshly criticizes Defense Minister Ehud Barak over Barak's own attack of members of the Likud.

"The Defense Minister is suffering from false visions and hallucinationsand continues to use his position to try to pass the electoral threshold," charged Danon, adding, "Barak is an extinct political species and it is time that he put his narrow political interests aside and think of the good of the State of Israel."

For the full article please click here