When the Pulpit Becomes a Weapon: The Lutheran Bishop Who Turned Reformation Into a Blood Libel. A Jerusalem Sermon That Echoed With Accusation

What was meant to be a solemn commemoration of spiritual renewal, a Reformation service in Jerusalem’s Old City, turned into a stage for one of the most brazen acts of moral inversion seen in modern Christendom.

Inside the stone walls of the historic Church of the Redeemer, Bishop Ibrahim Azar, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, did not speak of repentance, mercy, or the pursuit of truth. Instead, he thundered a false gospel of political propaganda, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, in a sermon that could have been scripted in Doha or Tehran.

The word “genocide”, translated identically in Arabic, English, and German, hung in the air like a curse. It was not a theological plea; it was an ideological indictment.

And that’s when Abraham Lehrer, Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the son of an Auschwitz survivor, stood up.
He didn’t protest.
He didn’t argue.
He simply walked out — a silent act of defiance that resounded louder than the bishop’s entire sermon.

“When I read the translation, the word ‘genocide’ in English, in German, I couldn’t stay,” Lehrer told German reporters later that evening.

He left the church, took a taxi back to his hotel, and refused to attend the reception that followed.
The rest of the high-ranking German delegation, still processing what they’d just heard, remained seated, visibly uncomfortable, yet paralyzed by the etiquette of diplomacy.

Eklat in Jerusalem: Weil der palästinensische Bischof Azar in einem Gottesdienst in Jerusalem von »Völkermord« spricht, verlässt der Vizepräsident des Zentralrats der Juden die Kirche. Die NRW-Antisemitismusbeauftragte sieht ein antisemitisches Muster. https://t.co/KJEokCCoIp

— Jüdische Allgemeine (@JuedischeOnline) November 3, 2025

From Reformation to Deformation

Bishop Azar’s words were not spontaneous. They were part of a pattern, a theological repurposing of Christian compassion into a political cudgel against the Jewish state.

“What does reformation look like after two years of genocide?” Azar asked rhetorically, as if reciting from a Hamas press release. “When the international community ignores Palestinian suffering, that is a call for reformation.”

No mention of October 7, of 1,200 murdered Israelis, of raped women, of beheaded children.
No mention of the hostages still languishing in Gaza’s tunnels, held by men who chant Allahu Akbar while hiding behind women and children.

Instead, Azar spoke of “falsely imprisoned people” and “checkpoints,” as though the barrier between Israel and terror were an inconvenience, not a necessity.
In French prayers that followed, worshippers asked for the release of “all prisoners in Israeli jails”, a phrase later confirmed to include Hamas terrorists.

The German Delegation’s Bitter Irony

The delegation attending the service was not just any group of tourists.
It included André Kuper, President of the North Rhine–Westphalia State Parliament; Sylvia Löhrmann, the region’s Antisemitism Commissioner; and Adelheid Ruck-Schröder, President of the Westphalian Evangelical Church, all of whom had spent the morning at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, reflecting on the moral abyss of human cruelty.

Hours later, they sat in silence as a Christian bishop accused the Jewish state, born from the ashes of that very abyss, of committing genocide.

If there is a word for irony in theology, this was it.

Eklat in #Jerusalem
Abraham Lehrer, Vizepräsident des @ZentralratJuden , verließ aus Protest den evangelischen Gottesdienst in der Erlöserkirche in der Altstadt.
Dort hatte der arabische evangelische Bischof in einem Gottesdienst zum Reformationsfest von einem „Völkermord in…

— Andreas Hallaschka 🇮🇱 🇺🇦  (@Hallaschka_HH) November 2, 2025

A Pattern of Anti-Israel Activism Cloaked in Clerical Robes

Bishop Azar’s record is no secret. His church, originally founded by German missionaries in the 19th century, still receives millions in support from German Protestant institutions.
And yet, those funds now flow into a narrative war against Israel.

In July, Azar accused the Israeli government of using “starvation as a weapon of ethnic cleansing.”
He is also a key promoter of the EAPPI program (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel), a controversial initiative that deploys so-called “peace activists” into Judea and Samaria to confront Israeli soldiers, cameras rolling.

This isn’t faith-based solidarity.
It’s a theological laundering of anti-Israel agitation.

Scholar’s Rebuke: “A Perverse Morality”

Dr. Danny Orbach, historian and professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, delivered a piercing rebuttal to Azar’s claims.

“This is not true morality,” he said. “This is perverse morality that rewards Hamas for hiding behind civilians. It ensures more bloodshed, not less.”

Orbach dismantled Azar’s accusation point by point:

• Genocide? “In every historic case of genocide, perpetrators sought to kill civilians en masse to erase a group. Israel has done the opposite.”

• Civilian harm? “The IDF spent extraordinary resources to conduct precision strikes, sacrificing military advantage to minimize civilian casualties.”

• Targeting patterns? “Statistical analyses show most casualties are fighting-age males, vastly overrepresented in the population, clear evidence of combatant engagement.”

• Humanitarian zones? “Despite Hamas exploiting them militarily, these areas were six times safer for civilians than elsewhere in Gaza.”

In short: Israel is not committing genocide. It is fighting one, a jihadist one, on behalf of civilization itself.

When History Repeats, It Whispers in the Pews First

To invoke “genocide” at a Reformation service in Jerusalem, while sitting in the shadow of the Holocaust memorial and within walking distance of where Hamas’s war began, is not mere insensitivity.
It is moral theater.
It is the desecration of the very conscience the Reformation once sought to reclaim.

Bishop Azar and his daughter Sally Azar, who herself has been criticized for pro-Hamas posts and maps erasing Israel, represent a new wave of clerical activism where anti-Israel rhetoric is baptized as justice, and truth is sacrificed on the altar of ideology.

world in their synagogues, prayers, and doctrines... Despite this, they imagine that in god's eyes they're ranked as his dearest children (2/2)

— Matt (@mattjpap) November 2, 2025

A Final Reflection

The walkout of one Jewish leader may seem small in the grand scheme of things.
But sometimes, one person standing up, or walking out, becomes the measure of sanity in a world gone mad.

Abraham Lehrer’s quiet exit from that church was more than a protest.
It was a reminder:
There are still Jews who will not sit quietly while the pulpit is turned into a tribunal against their people.
Not again.
Not ever.