Slovenes voted Sunday in a dramatic election roiled by interference and espionage claims. Israel’s Black Cube flew to Ljubljana. Slovenia’s queer community had everything to lose.
Prime Minister Robert Golob of Slovenia in Ljubljana, the capital, after the polls closed on Sunday. Credit Antonio Bronic/ReutersYou can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
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You can simply scroll past — but please don’t overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
You can simply scroll past—but please don't overlook the importance of an independent queer press.
Time is now or never.
Queer voices disappear without independent journalism to amplify them.
We document what others won't touch.
We hold power to account when it threatens our communities.
This work exists only because you choose to fund it directly.
Donate over €25/month and receive our limited-edition tote bag — a badge of resistance, a statement that you stand for fearless journalism.
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Can't donate? Sharing our work helps more than you think
On 22 December 2025, a private jet landed at Ljubljana airport at half past ten in the morning. Four passengers disembarked and made their way to Trstenjakova ulica 8, the headquarters of the Slovenian Democratic Party. Among them, according to Slovenia’s intelligence service SOVA: Dan Zorella, co-founder and CEO of Black Cube, the private intelligence firm built by veterans of Israel’s elite military units, and Giora Eiland, a retired IDF major general and former head of Israel’s National Security Council, a long-time Black Cube adviser. They were there, SOVA would later confirm, to meet Janez Janša, an admirer of Donald Trump.
Three months later, on Sunday, Janša’s party and Golob’s centre-left Freedom Movement fought to a near draw. With 99 per cent of ballots counted, Golob took 28.56 per cent to Janša’s 28.12. Neither has a majority in the 90-seat parliament. The next government depends on which camp can build a coalition with five smaller parties that also won seats. Put differently: Golob’s left-leaning allies hold 40 seats; Janša’s right-leaning bloc, 43.
Between the December landing and the March vote, something ugly happened. In the weeks before polling day, an anonymous Facebook profile called “Maske padajo”—Masks Are Falling—began releasing covertly filmed videos showing figures linked to Golob’s coalition discussing corruption and the manipulation of state contracts. The targets said they had been lured to meetings by people posing as foreign investors. The playbook was familiar to anyone who has followed Black Cube’s work in Romania, Hungary, or on behalf of Harvey Weinstein: fictitious companies, false identities, hidden cameras.
The operation initially handed Janša’s SDS a weapon against the government. But six days before the vote, Slovenian investigative weekly Mladina and the 8th of March Institute published findings tracing Black Cube’s principals to Janša’s doorstep. SOVA confirmed four visits. The state secretary for national security said the client came from within Slovenia. Golob flew to Brussels to request a European Commission investigation. Janša acknowledged knowing Eiland but denied the wider allegations.
Why Israel? Because Janša has long been one of its loudest European friends. During his third term as prime minister, he ordered government buildings to fly the Israeli flag. Golob took the opposite course: recognising Palestine as a state in 2024 and banning all products from Israeli settlements in occupied territory. A Janša return would reverse those positions. Black Cube’s founders come out of Israeli military intelligence, and they knew what they stood to gain. As GAY45 has reported, ethno-nationalist European politicians and the Israeli security world have been circling each other for years. What the Slovenian case adds is the paper trail.
Queer Slovenians understood what was on the ballot. Slovenia became the first post-communist country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2022, after a Constitutional Court ruling struck down the heterosexual-only definition of marriage and ordered parliament to legislate accordingly. The law, which came into force in January 2023, also granted full joint adoption rights to same-sex couples. Janša’s SDS opposed both measures, organised rallies against the new law, and had previously backed two referendums—in 2012 and 2015—that blocked earlier attempts at marriage equality. Members of the SDS youth wing provoked participants at the 2023 Ljubljana Pride with signs declaring that “there are only two genders.” Janša himself did not condemn the violence that marred that parade.
None of this suggests a party that has accepted the settlement. A Janša government would not need to repeal same-sex marriage—Article 90 of the constitution now prohibits referendums on human rights matters, a safeguard written in precisely to prevent a repeat of 2015. But you do not need to change a law to make it mean less. You defund the organisations that use it, you let enforcement lapse, you stay quiet when people get beaten at Pride. Janša did all three between 2020 and 2022.
Sunday’s numbers do not foreclose on that. But they do not guarantee it, either. Golob said he could form a government; he conceded that “tough negotiations lie ahead.” The smaller parties—the Social Democrats, The Left, a Green-liberal grouping—will pick the winner. The arithmetic favours the left, but only just, and Janša has spent three decades doing whatever coalition arithmetic requires.
And then there is Hungary. Orbán votes on 12 April. Janša’s closest ally, the architect of a regime that prohibits the depiction of homosexuality to minors, is polling badly for the first time in 16 years. If both Slovenia and Hungary tilt away from the nationalist right this spring, the populist bloc loses two anchors. If Janša builds a coalition, Slovenia joins the Orbán–Fico axis at precisely the moment the EU’s capacity to contain it is being tested.
A private jet, a spy firm, a former general. The tools were not subtle. Whether they were enough is now a question for the smaller parties and whatever conscience they can find between them.
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