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Ik vertrouw het CDA geen coalitievorming toe

Dit artikel is geschreven door Alain Verheij columnist

Gepubliceerd op 25 oktober 2025

In kerkzalen door het hele land kom ik hen tegen: mensen die al net zolang Trouw-abonnee zijn als CDA-lid. Vaak meer dan dertig jaar. Dat laatste lidmaatschap valt hun al tijdenlang zwaar. Ze vertellen me weemoedig dat het CDA ooit een ziel had.

Dat heb ik als millennial nooit meegekregen. In deze eeuw heeft het CDA geformeerd met de LPF en officieus met de PVV. We hebben een Henk Bleker voorbij zien komen en die vorige lijsttrekker, een McKinsey-consultant. Het is te gênant voor woorden hoe kleurloos en verrechtst deze partij zich gedurende mijn leven heeft getoond.

Dat wordt nu allemaal anders, zeggen en schrijven de onverwoestbaar optimistische oudgedienden mij. Er is verandering op komst en zijn naam is Henri. We mogen hem bij zijn voornaam noemen. Hij heeft zijn Rotterdamse tongval niet verruild voor aardappel-Haags of mediapark-ABN. Henri is trots als mensen hem saai vinden.

Volgens EenVandaag is hij de sympathiekste lijsttrekker (Joost Eerdmans eindigde in datzelfde kiezersonderzoek op 3, dus ik zou me niet overdreven rijk rekenen). En dat ondanks het recente slippertje in Nieuwsuur waarin hij een homoseksuele jongen die had geleden onder het bewind van een streng-reformatorische school een beetje liet vallen: “Zijn ouders kunnen hem naar een andere school sturen”. Henri, bedankt.

Er moet nog veel veranderen, ook bij Henri zelf Ten diepste geloof ik ook best dat het CDA te redden valt en dat Henri Bontenbal die wederopstanding (ik noem het liever een bekering) kan leiden. Dat gaat deze ronde echter niet gebeuren. Er moet nog te veel veranderen.

Ook in Henri zelf, die desgevraagd heeft aangegeven dat áls hij een coalitiepartner mocht en moest kiezen, hij de voorkeur zou geven aan de VVD boven GroenLinks-PvdA. Hoe krijg je dat uit je strot na decennia van neoliberaal afbraakbeleid door de gewetenloze bende van (nu nog) Yesilgöz en de haren?

Qua rechtsstatelijkheid is het ook maar mondjesmaat. De Nederlandse orde van advocaten toetste twintig maatregelen uit het programma van het CDA. Tien ervan kregen groen licht, negen geel, eentje zelfs rood. Toen Vrij Nederland van alle partijen het respect voor democratische instituties en rechten peilde, eindigde CDA precies in het midden. Nu mag een middenpartij van mij best gematigd zijn, maar niet op het gebied van democratie en rechtsstaat.

Dat het CDA uitgeprocedeerde asielzoekers strafbaar wil stellen, een maatregel die géén grip op migratie biedt maar wel gevaarlijk is voor de mensen die het treft, is voor mij een breekpunt. Onder het motto ‘Een fatsoenlijk land’ haast de partij zich wel te zeggen dat het helpen van deze mensen níet strafbaar wordt. Nee, dan ga je jagen op je eigen electoraat.

Niet weer zo’n ellendige constructie met die eeuwige VVD Burgers die soms wel een halve eeuw lid zijn van de kerk, deze krant en de christendemocraten. Vrijwilligers die een kom soep willen mogen brengen aan hen die een kom soep nodig hebben.

Of die barmhartige mensen hun hoop op het CDA kunnen vestigen? Misschien gaat het alsnog de goede kant op, maar ik vertrouw deze partij momenteel geen coalitievorming toe.

Natuurlijk zou het een regelrechte ramp zijn als er weer een extreemrechtse regering komt. Maar het moet óók niet over centrumrechts. Niet weer zo’n ellendige constructie met die eeuwige onontkoombare VVD in de regering. In een ideaal geval komen we tot een formatie waarin Henri hooguit als rechtsbuiten mag meespelen. Daarom stem ikzelf woensdag nog linkser dan ik eerder ooit heb aangedurfd.

One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide By attaching a military goal to each act of killing, Israelis of all stripes could partake in the slaughter without questioning the morality of their actions. Yuval Abraham By Yuval Abraham October 20, 2025 Israeli soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip, July 22, 2025. (Oren Cohen/Flash90) Israeli soldiers in the northern Gaza Strip, July 22, 2025. (Oren Cohen/Flash90) In partnership with

A few months after October 7, I enrolled in an introductory course on genocide at the Open University of Israel. The lecturer began the first class by telling us — about 20 Jewish-Israeli students gathered on Zoom — that by the end of the semester we would understand exactly what genocide entails and be able to explain why Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.

In a nutshell, his argument was this: At most, Israel might be destroying Gaza, but its actions are driven by military objectives rather than an “intent to destroy” a specific group “as such,” as the Genocide Convention outlines. Without this intent, he concluded, the term genocide does not apply.

Over the past two years, I have published numerous investigations exposing details of Israel’s open-fire policy in Gaza, several of which have helped substantiate legal claims of genocide. When South Africa filed its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, it relied in part on our November 2023 exposé that revealed Israel’s AI-driven mass assassination campaign targeting the family homes of alleged militants. When a UN committee similarly reached the conclusion last month that Israel has committed genocide, it relied in part on another of our investigations showing that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s dead were civilians according to an internal Israeli intelligence database.

Subscribe to The Landline +972's weekly newsletter Your@mail.here Sign up Yet few of the dozens of soldiers and officers I spoke to over the course of these investigations, many of whom served willingly as whistleblowers, saw themselves as participants in genocide. When intelligence officers and commanders described bombing family homes in Gaza, they often echoed the university lecturer’s logic: Sure, we may have committed crimes, but we were not murderers because every act had a specific military objective.

For example, after October 7, the army authorized soldiers to kill up to 20 civilians in order to assassinate a suspected low-level Hamas operative, or hundreds of civilians when targeting more senior figures. The vast majority of these assassinations occurred in civilian homes where no military activity was taking place. But for most of the soldiers I spoke to, the mere existence of an alleged military target, even in cases where the intelligence picture was murky, justified virtually any resultant death toll.

The moment an Israeli airstrike hits a house in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, September 28, 2025. (Fathi Ibrahim/Flash90) The moment an Israeli airstrike hits a house in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, September 28, 2025. (Fathi Ibrahim/Flash90) In another investigation, a soldier described to me how his battalion used remote-controlled drones to fire on Palestinian civilians, including women and children, as they tried to return to their destroyed homes in an area occupied by the Israeli army, killing 100 unarmed Palestinians over the course of three months. The goal, he explained, was not to kill them for the sake of it, but to keep the neighborhood empty and thus safer for the soldiers stationed there.

Another soldier recounted participating in the shelling of an entire residential block, comprising more than 10 multi-story apartment buildings and one high-rise all packed with families. She knew beforehand that in doing so she and her crew would likely kill some 300 civilians. But the operation, she explained, was based on intelligence suggesting that a relatively senior Hamas commander might be hiding somewhere beneath one of these buildings. Without more precise information, they destroyed the entire area in the hope of killing him.

The soldier conceded that the attack amounted to a massacre. But in her view, this was not the intention; the goal was to hit the commander, who may not have even been there.

This mission-oriented framing played a crucial role in enabling ordinary Israelis to participate in genocide — perhaps more than obedience alone, which is usually assumed to be the primary motivator in such contexts. By understanding each act of violence as a discrete task, from targeting a Hamas operative to securing a perimeter, soldiers could avoid confronting their role in the mass slaughter of civilians.

This mindset also becomes easier to sustain in an era of artificial intelligence and big data. These technologies can gather and analyze information about an entire population almost instantaneously, mapping buildings and their occupants with purported precision. As such, they produce an endless stream of apparent military justifications, creating a veneer of legality for a policy of mass murder. AI has, in effect, enabled Israel to turn a cornerstone of international law — the obligation to attack only military targets — into a tool that legitimizes and accelerates the very slaughter it was intended to prevent.

Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in an Israeli attack while waiting for humanitarian aid, at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, August 21, 2025. (Yousef Zaanoun/Activestills) Palestinians mourn loved ones killed in an Israeli attack while waiting for humanitarian aid, at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, August 21, 2025. (Yousef Zaanoun/Activestills) Overlapping motives As a fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire takes effect in Gaza, global efforts to ensure accountability and justice will continue in full force. South Africa’s case at the ICJ will rumble on, while Israel and its supporters — including Western governments — will seek to discredit accusations of genocide in order to ward off the legal consequences of such a ruling. In doing so, they will continue to point to the stated military objectives behind every specific attack, as the army does routinely in response to our reporting.

The tendency of perpetrators of genocide to invoke “security” as a justification for mass violence is well documented, rationalizing acts of brutality within a broader framework of self-defense. But whatever flimsy excuse is given in each case, Israel’s attacks were undeniably carried out in the full knowledge that they would lead to the destruction of another people. The result is a Palestinian death toll that is thought to exceed 100,000, and the near-total obliteration of the Gaza Strip.

Still, to focus only on how each individual act of violence accumulated to create an overall reality of genocide is also to miss the point. For many of Israel’s leaders, mass death and destruction was the intention. From deliberately starving 2 million people and gunning down aid seekers, to systematically leveling entire cities and actively working toward mass expulsion, the annihilation of the Palestinians of Gaza as a goal in itself was abundantly clear.

Particularly after Israel shattered the previous ceasefire in March, whatever military objectives could be said to have existed became even more tenuous. What remained was a bare murderous logic that the army rarely bothered to justify in military terms.

This motivation was clear not only in deed but also in word. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it in May: “We keep demolishing houses; they have nowhere to return. The only logical outcome will be Gazans’ desire to emigrate outside the Strip.” Ex-military intelligence chief Aharon Haliva went into even blunter detail: “For everything that happened on October 7, for every one of us who died on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die. It doesn’t matter now — children or not. I’m not speaking out of revenge but as a message for future generations. They need a Nakba now and then to feel the price.”

Israeli soldiers stand on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip, August 28, 2025. (Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90) Israeli soldiers stand on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip, August 28, 2025. (Tsafrir Abayov/Flash90) But crucially, mission-oriented motives and genocidal motives were not mutually exclusive; instead, they reinforced one another. And this overlap widened the base of those willing to participate in the slaughter.

The openly genocidal soldiers — of whom there were many — razed the city of Rafah to the ground in order to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians, while those with a more liberal self-image destroyed it to create a “security buffer zone.” Haliva saw the bombing of family homes as an act of revenge, while soldiers who were more troubled by such justifications could tell themselves it was done in order to hit a target present inside.

The mission-driven mentality fragments the destruction of a people and place into thousands of isolated acts, each justified on its own terms, none acknowledged as part of a larger campaign of genocide. It allows some of those carrying it out to ignore the overarching intent, even as leaders like Netanyahu and Haliva articulate it openly. To invert the old saying: In focusing on each tree, they miss the forest of genocide.

Genocide as moral framework What lies at the heart of all of these justifications is the dehumanization of Palestinians. The soldiers who slaughtered 300 people to kill a single Hamas operative told me they probably would not have done so if one Jewish child had been in the building.

Dehumanization runs in two directions: Not only does it inflate the victim into a monstrous threat, it also does the opposite — reducing them to dust, shrinking them until they disappear. That is how a soldier carrying out a defined mission can justify the killing of 300 people. Th