Another method has become increasingly visible: targeting people instead of confronting the policies, investigations or decisions they represent.
If an idea cannot be defeated, its advocate becomes the target. If an investigation cannot be stopped, pressure shifts to the investigator. If an agreement cannot be blocked directly, the negotiator becomes the battlefield. The objective remains the same; only the route changes, passing through the person carrying the decision or defending it.
This goes beyond ordinary political disagreement. States criticize one another, exert diplomatic pressure and seek to shape public opinion. All are familiar instruments of international politics. The distinction emerges when the focus shifts from the position to the person, from changing a policy to weakening the individual capable of implementing it.
The logic is straightforward. Changing the position of one person can be easier than altering the balance of power or the facts on the ground. Damaging someone’s reputation, exposing vulnerabilities or applying personal pressure can sometimes accomplish what years of negotiation cannot.
Consider several cases from recent years, and a pattern becomes difficult to ignore.
Fatou Bensouda, then prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, did not have to guess where the pressure was coming from. The Guardian reported that Yossi Cohen, then head of Mossad, personally approached Bensouda through a series of secret encounters and sought to pressure her into abandoning an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories. According to the investigation, Cohen employed threats and manipulation, while Israeli intelligence took a close interest in members of Bensouda’s family. Bensouda later said she understood references to her and her family’s security as threats. She nevertheless continued the investigation.
Her successor, Karim Khan, took the Palestine case further, seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan’s own position later collapsed under a different form of pressure. In 2024, a junior ICC lawyer accused him of sexual misconduct. Khan denied the allegations. In July 2026, 82 of the Court’s 125 member states voted to remove him for serious misconduct. Claims have circulated that the allegations were politically exploited because of Khan’s actions against Israeli officials, although that does not establish that Israel created the allegations itself.
That distinction matters. Khan’s personal conduct cannot simply be converted into evidence of an Israeli operation. The broader point is narrower and more defensible: the prosecutor who succeeded Bensouda became engulfed in a damaging scandal and was ultimately removed from office while the Palestine investigation had become one of the most politically contentious cases in the Court’s history.
The pattern appeared elsewhere.
Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl, two senior U.S. officials involved in building the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, were targeted in an operation involving Black Cube. Operatives using false identities approached members of their families in search of information that might be used against them. In Romania, Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi faced a similar operation while leading a major anti-corruption campaign. In that case, the operatives were arrested and convicted.
Technology added another layer. Pegasus spyware demonstrated how the phones of heads of state, diplomats, and journalists could become targets. Other campaigns sought to pressure academics, researchers and journalists because of their positions or their work.
Then came Slovenia, where the issue moved to another level.
The target was no longer merely an individual. It was the political environment that determines who governs and what policies follow.
In the weeks before Slovenia’s March 2026 parliamentary election, Slovenian authorities uncovered activity by Black Cube, the Israeli private intelligence company. Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency, SOVA, said it had evidence of foreign interference in the election and identified Black Cube activity as part of it. The agency presented material linking three Black Cube representatives to a visit to the headquarters of the opposition SDS party. SOVA also reported findings concerning Black Cube activities in Slovenia and abroad that, in its assessment, demonstrated foreign interference in the Slovenian election.
Prime Minister Robert Golob formally informed the European Commission of foreign interference. His letter referred to Black Cube and described the activity as part of an operation involving illegal surveillance and smear campaigns against political figures.
Golob’s party narrowly won the March 22 election but failed to assemble a governing majority. After weeks of political deadlock, Janez Janša formed a coalition and became prime minister. His government subsequently moved to reverse key elements of Slovenia’s previous policy toward Israel and Palestine.
Janša announced his intention to reverse Slovenia’s recognition of Palestine and move the country’s embassy to Jerusalem. Slovenia had recognized the State of Palestine in June 2024. Israel subsequently announced that it would open an embassy in Ljubljana, marking a significant shift in relations between the two countries.
The sequence does not prove that the Black Cube operation changed the election result or brought Janša to power. That conclusion would go beyond the available evidence. The official findings nevertheless make Slovenia relevant to the wider pattern: Slovenian intelligence identified foreign interference and Black Cube activity within it, while a major reversal followed the political outcome in Slovenia’s policy toward Israel and Palestine.
The level of the conflict had therefore changed. The target was no longer simply the person standing in the way of a policy. It was the political environment capable of producing that policy.
From Slovenia, the path to J.D. Vance becomes clearer.
During Vance’s visit to Israel in October 2025, the Knesset voted, by a margin of one, on a proposal to apply Israeli law to the occupied West Bank. Vance responded sharply. Speaking from the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport, he called the move a “very stupid political stunt” and made clear that annexation was not, and would not become, U.S. policy.
The dispute extended beyond the West Bank. Washington was pursuing wider regional arrangements and understood that annexation could undermine the entire process, particularly because Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar had made clear that it constituted a red line.
Months later, Vance emerged as the leading American figure behind a new understanding with Iran aimed at closing Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon in return for sanctions relief and the restoration of Iranian oil exports to world markets.
The confrontation then shifted again.
Rather than remaining an open political dispute, the battle moved into the digital sphere. Time reported, citing U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act filings, that Brad Parscale, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, and his company Clock Tower X were running a large pro-Israel influence campaign funded by the Israeli government. The reported contract was worth about $1.5 million a month, with the campaign aimed particularly at younger Americans within Trump’s MAGA base.
Its stated purpose was to combat antisemitism online. Time, however, reported that Israeli officials familiar with the campaign described a broader objective: preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel. The campaign became relevant to Vance when conservative influencers associated with the network attacked the Iran negotiations and those seeking to end the war.
The message directed at Vance was unmistakable: he was portrayed as being under Qatar’s influence, taking his cues from Tucker Carlson and therefore unfit to defend American interests.
If Vance’s position could not be changed, the alternative was to influence the voters who constituted his political base.
Vance did not remain silent. In an interview with Joe Rogan and later in exchanges with the press, he described the campaign as a foreign effort to undermine the agreement he was pursuing. “Go to hell,” he said. “I represent Americans first.” He also argued that people within the Israeli system were, “beyond a shadow of a doubt,” seeking to influence American public opinion to keep the war going and prevent a negotiated settlement.
Parscale rejected Vance’s interpretation, saying there was no evidence that he had acted against the Trump administration or attempted to undermine the Iran agreement. That denial matters. So does the documented existence, through FARA filings, of an Israeli government-funded influence campaign directed at American public opinion.
This is where the cases converge.
Bensouda represents direct pressure on an investigator. Khan illustrates the vulnerability of an officeholder once personal conduct overwhelms institutional authority, although the evidence does not establish an Israeli operation against him. Rhodes and Kahl represent attempts to gather compromising information about people shaping policy. Kövesi demonstrates how similar methods can be directed against an official challenging powerful interests. Slovenia takes the issue into the political environment that produces decisions. Vance brings it to the heart of American policymaking and into the digital ecosystem surrounding a potential future president.
The instruments have evolved—from surveillance and personal pressure to private intelligence operations, spyware, and digitally targeted influence campaigns. The underlying logic remains strikingly consistent: when a policy cannot be changed directly, weaken the person carrying it; when that person cannot be isolated, reshape the political environment around them.
From Bensouda to Vance, this is what makes these episodes more than a collection of unrelated incidents. They reveal how political confrontation can migrate from the policy itself to the people who make it possible—and, ultimately, to the political environment that gives them the power to act.
*The writer is a former assistant foreign minister
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