A Reformation service held by the German-speaking Protestant community in Jerusalem's Old City on Tuesday was marred by controversy. Abraham Lehrer, Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, demonstratively left the event after Protestant Bishop Ibrahim Azar made severe propagandist statements against Israel in his sermon, accusing it of genocide. This led to numerous media reports in Germany, criticizing the Protestant Church.
Lehrer is part of a high-ranking delegation from the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament currently in Israel, advocating for a Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial site to be located in North Rhine-Westphalia. The delegation includes, among others, State Parliament President André Kuper (CDU), Antisemitism Commissioner Sylvia Löhrmann (Greens), and the President of the Westphalian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Adelheid Ruck-Schröder.
After a lengthy visit to Yad Vashem, the group attended the Reformation service at the Redeemer's Church in Jerusalem's Old City. Lehrer was explicitly welcomed at the beginning of the service in his capacity as Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Bishop speaks of "two years of genocide"
In his sermon, delivered in Arabic and for which translations were offered, Bishop Azar spoke of a "genocide" against the Palestinians:
"But what does reformation look like after two years of genocide? (…) When the international community ignores Palestinian suffering, that is a call for reformation. (…) When the dominate global narrative dehumanizes the Palestinians and ignores the Palestinian Christians' existence, that is a call for reformation."
Azar also criticized Israeli checkpoints in Judea and Samaria and spoke about "falsely imprisoned people". He did not mention the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, the fate of the Israeli hostages, or recent reports of Gaza civilians killed by Hamas.
Abraham Lehrer is the vice-president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the umbrella organization for Jewish communities in Germany. His mother is a survivor of the Auschwitz camp.
"The translation said in English 'genocide,' in German 'genocide' – when I read that, I couldn't stay," Lehrer said to German news outlets.
In the middle of the sermon, Abraham Lehrer stood up, left the service immediately, and took a taxi back to his hotel. He did not attend the subsequent reception hosted by the congregation. The other members of the North-Rhine-Westphalia delegation stayed until the end of the service and left the reception early.
Prayer for the release of "all prisoners" in Israeli prisons
In another part of the service, prayers were offered in French for the release of "all prisoners in Israeli prisons." A worshipper who spoke after the event with the leader of this prayer reported that he did not deny that this included imprisoned Hamas terrorists.
Bishop Ibrahim Azar leads the Evangelical Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, which was founded in the 19th century by German missionaries and still receives substantial financial support from Germany. He is known for constant accusations against Israel. In July, for example, he publicly accused the Israeli government of using starvation as a "weapon of ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians.
Azar is also considered to be one of the leaders of the EAPPI program, which sends international anti-Israel activists to Judea and Samaria, where confrontations with Israeli soldiers regularly occur.
"This is not true morality"
Danny Orbach, a military historian and an associate professor at the History and Asian Studies Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, states about the claims of Azar:
"This is not true morality. This is perverse morality that incentivizes the likes of Hamas to hide even more behind civilians, using them as human shields, thus amplifying the destructive effects of wars and the plight of victims in the future.
The situation in Gaza is as far away from genocide as possible. In all known cases of genocide, the perpetrating side tried to kill as many civilians as possible, in order to destroy the group as a whole or in a substantial part.
In Gaza, by contrast, even the necessary conditions of maximizing deliberate killing of civilians are not met. Nor does indifference. In fact, the IDF sacrificed an important military advantage in order to spare civilians and minimize their killing.
In addition, analysis of bombing patterns shows that in the first, more deadly two months of the war, Israel spent an incredible amount of ammunition in order to conduct a very large number of small, focused attacks against targets embedded in an urban environment. Had it wanted to kill large numbers of civilians, one bomb could kill several hundred in dense areas, and Israel had all the incentives to spare ammunition, being faced with several fronts and possible embargoes. Yet it chose to expend scarce resources in order to minimize the death of uninvolved civilians, bringing the ratio of bombs per casualty in the first two months of the war to something less than one bomb. This is certainly not the mark of indiscriminate bombings.
Also, careful casualty analysis of Gaza Health Ministry Data (suspicious due to affiliations with Hamas, and yet), shows that fighting-age men are numerous among the war casualties in a way that widely overrepresents their share in the general population.
Finally, none of the above should make us ignore the enormous human toll in Gaza, the widespread destruction, and the immense suffering of the population. All wars are hell, and from all wars one could broadcast an endless stream of horror pictures of hellish human suffering. Certainly in urban wars, and certainly in wars where an enemy like Hamas is deliberately using civilians as human shields, building 1000 km of tunnels below almost every civilian structure, and is systematically using hospitals, schools, mosques, and kindergartens for military purposes.
And yet, though Hamas used the safer areas (humanitarian zones) for military purposes, hiding its leaders there and shooting hundreds of rockets towards Israeli civilians, according to our statistical analysis, the humanitarian zones were safer for Gaza civilians almost sixfold than other areas of the Gaza Strip. That is, Israel made a lot of effort to spare civilians even though Hamas abused the humanitarian zones."
Furthermore, Professor Orbach notices, "I do not think it is legitimate to spread vile Hamas propaganda, which is just false and amounts to blood libel, in front of a delegation going mainly to Yad Vashem."
Bishop Ibrahim Azar's daughter, Sally Azar, also an employee of the Protestant Church, recently came under criticism as well. At the German Protestant Church Assembly in Hanover, she led a workshop on "Palestine", during which, according to reports, a map was shown on which Israeli cities were listed only with their Arabic names; Tel Aviv was completely missing. Furthermore, on the day of the Hamas attack, October 7, 2023, she posted the sentence "Gaza just broke out of prison " on Instagram – many interpreted this as an endorsement of the attack.
