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Michael Kuenne

Ron Prosor and the Battle for Historical Truth

Ron Prosor, Ambassador of Israel to Germany, Photo: Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Ron Prosor, Ambassador of Israel to Germany, Photo: Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

How Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Exposed Der Spiegel’s Distortion of Holocaust Memory

Diplomacy, at its core, is an exercise in restraint. It is an art form that demands patience, decorum, and calculated rhetoric. But there are moments when diplomacy must break its conventions – when the stakes are too high, the distortions are too grotesque, and silence becomes complicity.

Israel’s Ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, has proven to be a diplomat who understands precisely when that moment has arrived.

In a display of editorial recklessness, the German magazine Der Spiegel published an interview with Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov on January 25, 2025, just days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day – the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The original headline, “The Holocaust serves Israel as a lesson in inhumanity”, was met with outrage. Critics argued that the framing implied Holocaust inversion, a deeply troubling rhetorical distortion where the Jewish people, once victims of genocide, are recast as its perpetrators.

Though Der Spiegel later changed the headline amid backlash, its original choice of words and the juxtaposition of Auschwitz remembrance with an article critical of Israel were widely condemned. The publication was accused of manipulating Holocaust memory, using a solemn moment of historical reflection as a springboard to criticize Israel’s policies.

A Diplomatic Response to a Distortion of Memory

Ambassador Ron Prosor, in his forceful response to Der Spiegel, addressed the issue with clarity:

“Let me make one thing crystal clear: The Germans and their accomplices systematically murdered Jews as part of the ‘Final Solution.

The Holocaust was not a conflict. It was not a war between two equal sides. It was genocide, the systematic annihilation of a people. That distinction should be beyond question, yet the rhetoric embraced by publications like Der Spiegel makes it necessary to reiterate.

Instead of using the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation to educate, reflect, and reinforce the imperative of combating antisemitism, Der Spiegel made a deliberate choice.

It published an interview in which Bartov argued that Israel has “learned the wrong lesson” from the Holocaust – suggesting that instead of upholding moral responsibility, the Jewish state has used its historical trauma as a justification for inhumane policies.

This framing is a textbook example of how Holocaust memory is increasingly manipulated and weaponized against the very people it was meant to protect. Instead of honoring the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, Der Spiegel chose to amplify a narrative that portrays their descendants as having perverted the lessons of their own genocide to justify oppression.

The juxtaposition of Auschwitz with an image of destruction in Gaza, coupled with a provocative headline, drew immediate condemnation from Jewish organizations, historians, and diplomats. The German-Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine noted that the editorial decision suggested a moral equivalence between Nazi crimes and Israel’s actions in Gaza – a comparison that crossed an ethical line.

A Pattern of Bias and Selective Journalism

Ron Prosor, an experienced diplomat known for his uncompromising stance on historical accuracy, did not limit his response to just this article. He pointed to a broader trend of selective journalism at Der Spiegel, particularly in its coverage of Israel and Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.

In his letter, Prosor highlighted that Der Spiegel has consistently:

  • Minimized Hamas’s role in the October 7 massacre, failing to fully acknowledge the mass murder, rape, and abduction of Israeli civilians.
  • Framed Israeli victims as combatants, using visual and textual framing to create a false moral symmetry between Hamas terrorists and Israeli soldiers.
  • Amplified anti-Israel voices, providing a platform for those who delegitimize Israel, while excluding perspectives that challenge this narrative.

“For Der Spiegel, Hamas does not exist – a ruthless terrorist organization that built terror tunnels, planned mass murder for years, and, in one single day, massacred 1,200 Jews, raped, burned, and abducted.” Prosor’s words struck at the core of a disturbing trend in European discourse: the erasure of Jewish suffering when it does not fit a politically convenient narrative.

This controversy is not just about one article. It is not just about Der Spiegel. It is about a broader ideological battle over the meaning of Jewish history.

It is about whether the Holocaust will be remembered as a singular moral catastrophe – or whether it will be cynically repurposed to delegitimize the very state that arose from its ashes.

It is about whether the world will acknowledge the unique vulnerabilities of the Jewish people – or whether those vulnerabilities will be dismissed as politically inconvenient.

It is about whether we will allow a dangerous and growing movement to turn Jews from the world’s most documented victims into its most falsely accused oppressors.

The rhetoric that Der Spiegel has embraced—the rhetoric that Ron Prosor has so forcefully denounced – is not harmless. It does not exist in a vacuum.

It is the rhetoric that fuels violent anti-Israel protests in Berlin, London, and Paris.
It is the rhetoric that justifies boycotts, delegitimization, and political isolation of the Jewish state. It is the rhetoric that normalizes antisemitism, feeds conspiracies, and creates the conditions for further violence against Jews.

Ron Prosor understands this. He understands that words shape reality—and that false historical narratives lead to real-world consequences.

That is why his voice in this moment is so critical. History is not neutral, not passive, but a battleground. In this battle, Ron Prosor draws a clear line in the sand. Those who value truth must stand with him. If we do not, the same forces that have sought to rewrite Jewish history in the past will do so again.

And if we allow that to happen, then we have failed to uphold the very lessons of the Holocaust that Der Spiegel so cynically claimed to invoke.

About the Author
Michael Kuenne works as a journalist on antisemitism, extremism, and rising threats to Jewish life. His reporting continually sheds light on the dangers that come from within radical ideologies and institutional complicity, and where Western democracies have failed in confronting the new rise of Jew-hatred with the due urgency it does call for. With hard-hitting commentary and muckraking reporting, Kuenne exposed how the antisemitic narratives shape policymaking, dictate public discourse, and fuel hate toward Israel. His writings have appeared in a number of international media outlets, including The Times of Israel Blogs. Kuenne has become a voice heard for blunt advocacy in regard to Israel's right to self-defense, critiquing ill-conceived humanitarian policies serving only to empower terror, while demanding a moral clarity which seems beyond most Western leaders. With a deep commitment to historical truth, he has covered the resurgence of Holocaust distortion in political rhetoric, the dangerous normalization of antisemitic conspiracies in mainstream culture, and false equivalencies drawn between Israel's actions and the crimes of its enemies. His reporting dismantles sanitized language that whitens the record of extremism and insists on calling out antisemitism-whether from the far right, the far left, or Islamist movements, without fear or hesitation.
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