Ron Prosor

Prosor was born in Israel in 1958 and is the son of a diplomat.[1][8] His father, Uri, was born in Germany, and his family fled Berlin before the Holocaust.[3][9] In a 2021 interview, Prosor described growing up within the foreign service, connecting his own diplomatic career with the professional environment of his childhood.[8] His subsequent assignments took him to Britain, Washington, and Switzerland before he became Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations.[8]

Prosor served in the Israel Defense Forces’ Artillery Corps and attained the rank of major.[1] He later studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating with distinction with a master’s degree in political science.[1] When his appointment to Germany was announced decades later, he described the opportunity to serve in his late father’s birthplace as a chance to “close a circle.”[9]

Prosor spent 30 years in Israel’s Foreign Ministry, with assignments encompassing bilateral representation, ministry leadership, and multilateral diplomacy.[5] From 1998 to 2002, he served as political adviser at Israel’s embassy in Washington.[10] During that assignment, he took part in the 2000 Camp David summit.[10] In 2003, he was appointed deputy director-general for strategic affairs, counterterrorism, and nuclear disarmament.[1] The following year, he became chief of staff to Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and subsequently served as a senior deputy director-general.[1]

He became director-general of the Foreign Ministry in 2004 and held the position during Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza.[5][11] His work in ministry leadership also included humanitarian assistance and the development of diplomatic relationships.[1] Together with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, he helped arrange Israeli medical aid and supplies for Sri Lanka and Indonesia after the tsunami.[1] That assistance helped lead to the first political dialogues between Israel and Indonesia.[1] He also helped reestablish diplomatic ties between Israel and the Vatican.[1]

Prosor’s ambassadorship to the United Kingdom began in 2007 and continued until 2011.[2] Queen Elizabeth II accepted his credentials in November 2007, and his British posting ended in June 2011.[1] During Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, demonstrators surrounded Israel’s embassy in Britain; some climbed its fence and threw firebombs and rocks.[8] Prosor rejected a recommendation to close diplomatic missions for the safety of their staff, declaring, “No embassy will close on my watch and under my command.”[8] A few days later, he joined a pro-Israel demonstration while wearing a flak jacket.[8]

His work in London also intersected with efforts to understand campaigns challenging Israel’s legitimacy.[12] A 2010 report acknowledged meetings with him in his capacity as Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and credited his insight into London’s role in such campaigns with prompting an examination of the networks involved.[12] The report’s acknowledgment placed his contribution within a wider investigation of efforts to delegitimize Israel rather than a formal account of his ambassadorial duties.[12]

In June 2011, Prosor began his tenure as Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, becoming the country’s 16th ambassador to the organization.[13][11] He remained in the post until 2015, completing a four-year term that ended in September.[2][11] During that service, he was unanimously elected deputy chairman—also described as vice president—of the General Assembly and chaired the United Nations Human Rights Committee.[11][5] He convened the first General Assembly session on antisemitism.[5]

Prosor described his approach to the UN posting as one of active public response rather than silent observation.[11] He recalled instructing members of the Israeli delegation to answer attacks on Israel instead of merely reporting them to Jerusalem.[11] His formulation of that instruction was: “Only I can approve your non-response.”[11] He also described occasions when he felt isolated in the role, while continuing to make use of the organization’s public platform to present Israel’s position.[11]

At the outset of his posting, Prosor advocated seeking diplomatic support across geographical regions rather than relying exclusively on Western countries.[13] He also defended continued Israeli engagement with the United Nations despite the numerical disadvantage he associated with the General Assembly.[13] In explaining why participation could still yield results, he cited the UN’s adoption of Holocaust Remembrance Day as an achievement from his period as Foreign Ministry director-general.[13] He distinguished the General Assembly from the Security Council, pointing to the United States’ use of its veto in the latter body.[13]

An entrepreneurship initiative became a significant practical undertaking of his UN mission.[11][6] Prosor and the Israeli delegation worked for a year on a resolution that received support from 141 countries, including countries that did not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.[11] Adopted in December 2012, the Israeli-drafted General Assembly Resolution 67/202 passed with 141 votes in favor, 31 against, and 11 abstentions.[6] The initiative focused on entrepreneurship as a means of addressing poverty and creating employment, drawing on Israeli experience in both the public and private sectors.[6]

In 2013, an Israeli-sponsored UN conference advanced the resolution’s objectives through workshops and seminars.[6] Prosor presented the conference as a diplomatic success and an opportunity to demonstrate Israeli expertise and creativity.[6] Representatives from most UN member states attended, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia, despite an Arab-country boycott campaign.[6] Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Nobel laureate Dan Shechtman spoke at the event, while Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed participants by video.[6] The combination of a broadly supported resolution and a practical conference gave the mission a setting in which to promote Israeli experience in economic development.[6]

Cultural diplomacy formed another part of his work at the UN.[11] Prosor organized a General Assembly performance by the Israeli singer Rita, also known as Rita Yahan-Farouz.[11] He recalled that arranging the event took a year and encountered opposition from Iran and Arab countries.[11] Delegates from 121 countries attended the concert.[11] Prosor presented the performance as an example of using a memorable event to convey messages about Israel, rather than relying only on speeches or formal exchanges between delegations.[11]

He also emphasized the potential for bilateral relationships to affect decisions in multilateral institutions.[4] As an illustration, he recounted an episode in which the Seychelles delegation, whose country had received Israeli aid, temporarily deputized him to represent it while its members were away from New York.[4] In that capacity, he cast a vote in favor of an Israeli proposal in the General Assembly.[4] The anecdote was part of his argument that relationships developed outside the UN could influence the support Israel received within it.[4]

His formal responsibilities included bringing attacks on Israeli citizens to the attention of the organization’s leadership.[14] Identical letters dated June 30, 2015, addressed to the secretary-general and the Security Council, bore his signature as “Ambassador, Permanent Representative.”[14] The letters requested condemnation of the killing of Israeli citizen Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld and set out Israel’s account of the attack and its aftermath.[14] They were circulated in a Security Council document dated July 1, 2015.[14]

After leaving the Foreign Ministry, Prosor headed the Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy at IDC Herzliya.[2] A 2017 account also identified him as the Abba Eban Chair of International Diplomacy at IDC and as a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.[5] An institutional profile identified him as holding the Samson Family Chair for Israel Public Diplomacy and described the institute’s work as addressing discrimination against Israel at the UN and opposing the global BDS movement.[15] By the announcement of his German appointment in 2021, he had recently led the institute at Reichman University.[9]

Israel announced Prosor’s appointment as its next ambassador to Germany in December 2021.[9] He formally took up the ambassadorship in August 2022 after presenting his credentials to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.[3] His first public statement as ambassador was delivered at Berlin’s Bebelplatz, the site of a Nazi-organized book burning in May 1933.[3] The setting accompanied his return to the city his family had fled before the Holocaust.[3] He had already described the appointment in personal terms, linking his new diplomatic responsibilities to his father’s German birthplace.[9]

His German posting included strengthening strategic and economic ties and promoting cooperation in innovation and deep technology.[7] At the 2025 Mind the Tech Berlin conference, he connected the delivery of the Arrow system to Germany with his family history, again describing the relationship as “closing a circle.”[16] He recalled that his father had been born in Germany and described his grandparents as “proud Prussians.”[16] In discussing the defense relationship, he presented the Arrow delivery as evidence of the cooperation that had developed between Israel and Germany.[16]

Prosor also encouraged Israeli businesses to cultivate relationships with German small and medium-sized firms, rather than concentrating only on large corporations.[16] He identified space and government digitization as fields in which cooperation could expand.[16] His advice to Israeli entrepreneurs entering Germany was to be patient, learn from previous mistakes, and avoid fearing failure.[16] The same Berlin discussion included German small-business representative Andreas Jahn, who identified transportation, security, technology, and the Internet of Things as established areas of cooperation.[16]

In 2017, Prosor and two other former Israeli UN ambassadors received the Washington Institute’s Scholar-Statesman Award in recognition of their work to enhance Israel’s position at the United Nations.[5] His service included both public advocacy and initiatives intended to widen Israel’s participation in the organization, among them the first General Assembly session on antisemitism and the entrepreneurship resolution and conference.[5][6] The entrepreneurship initiative secured support extending beyond countries with formal diplomatic relations with Israel.[11]

Prosor expressed the personal significance of the UN ambassadorship through the image of Israel’s flag among those of the organization’s member states.[4] Recalling the 193 flags outside the UN, he said that he saw 25 with crosses, 15 with crescents, and only one with a Magen David.[4] He concluded: “We all should be working every day to make sure that this flag hangs tall and proud in the family of nations, where it belongs.”[4] His account connected the daily work of representation with the place of the Jewish state within the international community.[4]

His later work continued to bring together public diplomacy and the promotion of Israeli expertise.[15][7] At the Abba Eban Institute, that work focused on international diplomacy, Israel’s treatment at the UN, and opposition to BDS.[15] In Germany, his responsibilities extended to strategic and economic relationships, innovation, and deep technology.[7] His public discussion of the Arrow system linked a contemporary Israeli achievement and bilateral defense cooperation with the history of a family that had fled Berlin before the Holocaust.[3][16]

Prosor’s criticism of the UN centered on his assessment that it was “structurally and institutionally biased against Israel,” citing the absence of Israelis in senior staff positions and exclusion from regional groups and committees.[4] He simultaneously stressed the importance of American support, saying that without the United States, Israel would be “chopped liver at the United Nations.”[4] These were his political assessments of the institution and Israel’s position within it, rather than independently established institutional findings.[4]

In 2011, he argued that a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood without negotiations would lead to violence and that a General Assembly resolution could not change realities on the ground without Israeli consent.[13] After the November 29, 2012, vote granting the Palestinian Authority non-member observer-state status—138 in favor, nine against, and 41 abstentions—he rejected the characterization of the result as an Israeli defeat, accused its supporters of rewarding terrorism and bypassing negotiations, and called for direct talks.[17] The vote did not itself provide membership in other UN organizations, which required separate applications.[17]

His accompanying historical argument cited Israel’s acceptance of the 1947 partition plan, Arab and Palestinian rejection, and what he described as rejected or evaded Israeli proposals at Camp David in 2000 and Annapolis in 2008.[17] In his November 24, 2014, General Assembly speech, he argued that international attention to the conflict was disproportionate to responses to violence and displacement elsewhere in the region.[18] He declared that the conflict concerned the existence of the Jewish state rather than the establishment of a Palestinian state, discussed Palestinian and Jewish displacement, and concluded, “The result isn’t realpolitik, it’s surrealpolitik.”[18] These were arguments in diplomatic speeches, not independent verification of the historical interpretations they advanced.[17][18]

The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs recounts his May 2014 address to Jewish lawyers’ associations, in which he argued that UNRWA perpetuated the refugee problem and the Palestinian claim to return, threatening Israel’s Jewish character through the admission of millions of refugees.[19] That account also attributes to him the claim that UNRWA’s resettlement mandate had been removed in 1965.[19] In August 2014, he objected to William Schabas’s appointment to chair the Gaza commission of inquiry, alleging that previously expressed views demonstrated bias against Israel.[20]

The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs also recounts his criticism of Ban Ki-moon during Operation Protective Edge, including his argument that greater scrutiny of Hamas would expose horrific war crimes.[21] It attributes to him objections to Ban’s linkage of Israeli democracy with settlement policy, criticism that Mahmoud Abbas was in the tenth year of a five-year term, and complaints about the preparation of a June 2015 report on children in armed conflict.[21] Prosor alleged that Israel had been denied an opportunity to provide information and contrasted the report’s attention to Israel—10 percent—with Iraq’s 2 percent and Syria’s 6 percent.[21] Separately, reflecting in 2021 on the Gaza disengagement, he argued that its assumptions had failed and that Hamas had interpreted withdrawal as weakness.[8]