Dardaleh! is Israel's new battle cry. Dardaleh – Hebrew slang for a weak kick in soccer – is the latest _expression_ of the right's unquenchable thirst for blood and destruction.
"Dardaleh!" Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted in connection to Friday's strike near Isfahan,expressing his disappointment at the scope of the death and destruction that Israel sowed, and was quoted throughout the world.
It's never enough for the right. It's always dardaleh. The Israeli attack that fully satisfies its lust has not been born. You will never hear the right say: Enough. We killed and destroyed enough. It will always want more. It is always only the "dunes" that are bombed in Gaza and even now, when the Strip is in ruins, it's not enough for the right. It wants Rafah. Not Rafah as a military goal, but as a place whose upright condition illustrates the military's dardaleh-ness.
When the army destroys Rafah, and all its refugees are scattered to the winds, this too will be a dardaleh operation, which will be followed immediately by the demand to return to the northern Strip and begin the destruction all over again. Otherwise, this will be considered a dardaleh war. "In Gaza we were a herd of elephants that left ruins behind it," Brig. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa boasted in an interview with Ynet on Friday. To the right, even this herd of trampling elephants is dardaleh.
A word whose origin is unclear, that pretends to be Yiddish but is not, that is mainly used in soccer, has become the truest _expression_ of the right's desire to strike, kill, punish, avenge. Israel kills seven people in an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, including two generals. Iran responds with a fierce attack, but the damage is minimal thanks to the defense systems, and Israel cannot resist. It absolutely must respond.
For the first time in a long while it does so with praiseworthy restraint, but the Ben-Gvirs don't see it this way. As in Gaza, they only want to see more and more Palestinian blood being shed, and they also want to see blood in Iran.
The fact that a harsher Israeli response would have sparked a regional war not only fails to dissuade them, it excites them. Just give them a regional war, preferably against everyone. They're foaming at the lips, all they want is more. They want Gog and Magog, Armageddon.
When Ben-Gvir tweeted "Dardaleh!" he meant that he wanted a big war with Iran, an all-out war that sparks the imagination, the kind that would bring about the final solution he dreams about.
All the rest – the terrible price that Israel will pay, the blood, the world – is overshadowed by this desire to see as much death and destruction as possible. This is the right's true aspiration.
Ben-Gvir knows that a larger operation would have required Iran to respond, and then Israel would have no choice but to retaliate in its usual manner, and then we are at war with Iran, a nation of 90 million people with an enormous military. This is what the father of the dardaleh theory wants.
It's doubtful there has ever been so much thirst for blood and war in Israel, certainly not so visibly or from a partner in the government. The right has always wanted much more – more territory, more force – but it never lusted for war.
Ben-Gvir knows that in writing "dardaleh" he is serving his ever-growing base. They want another war. A war with Arabs and Muslims is the best, bro. Watch Channel 14 News and see the "talent" whose eyes are all but popping out of their sockets in their zeal for war.
We will strike and ravage, ruin and plunder. First we take the Palestinians, then we take the Persians. No one can stop us, we can do it all alone. There is no world, no diplomacy; only force, everything by force, without limit.
The irony is that these people who are so disappointed by the dardaleh are themselves quite the dardaleh. If Israel is attacked, at least some of them will be the last to pay the price – such as Ben-Gvir himself, a paper general who distributes guns to the masses and wants a big war, in which he will take no part, of course. Ben-Gvir the dardaleh.