In Germany, A Protestant Pastor Expressed Solidarity With Israeli Victims of Terrorism

And he then become the object of repeated attacks by pro-Palestinian bullyboys.

This is one more horror story from Europe, where the hatred of Israel now extends to anyone who expresses sympathy for Israeli victims of terrorism. More on this phenomenon can be found here.

Following attacks and violence against worshippers at the Protestant parish in Langenau near Ulm (photo), the Bishop of Württemberg, Ernst-Wilhelm Gohl, has spoken out. The background to this is the ongoing campaign against local pastor Ralf Sedlak, who expressed solidarity with the Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism in a church service in October 2023.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sedlak, pastor of the Protestant parish in Langenau, told Israelnetz that in his sermon on the 15th of October 2023 he had initially spoken about the subject of fulfilling prayer. It was about serious illnesses and the struggle of those affected before God. Only in the second part did he refer to the terrorist attack: ‘Here, too, we reach the limits of what we would even like to imagine and where we are almost speechless and lament the suffering before God.’

A previously unknown man then stood up and shouted loudly: “This is wrong! The news is fake news!” Sedlak tried to react objectively, but this was hardly possible due to the aggression. It was only at the express request of the parish council that the troublemaker finally left the church. However, it didn’t stop there: to this day, the pastor faces hostility and is labelled a ‘fascist’ and a ‘Zionist’.

Since then, there have been repeated anti-Semitic actions and attempts at intimidation. For example, the vicarage had been shot at with a blank-firing pistol. Stickers with the inscription ‘Zionist = Fascist’ also appeared on the church and vicarage. During the Easter period, so-called ‘vigils’ were held almost weekly in front of the church – accompanied by slogans such as “It’s genocide. Boycott Israel‘ or ’Israel is a colonial settler rogue state”. The church congregation was labelled an ‘accomplice to genocide’, Sedlak himself a “Nazi” and ‘hate preacher’. In the end, the parish office was even smeared with the slogan ‘Gass Jews’.

Last Sunday, there were now physical attacks on churchgoers by Palestine supporters. Bishop Gohl spoke of the ‘fallacy’ of believing that such a conflict could be sat out. It was ‘unacceptable’ how Sedlak and his family had been defamed for one and a half years….

In Germany, where one would have hoped, for obvious reasons, that there would be widespread sympathy for Jewish victims of today’s epidemic of antisemitism, it is not only Jews who are victims of hate, but those non-Jews who, like Pastor Sedlak, express fellow feeling for the Israeli victims of Hamas’ atrocities — the rapes, tortures, mutilations, and murders — carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023. A week after those atrocities, the Protestant pastor Sedlak in Ulm gave over part of his sermon to expressing solidarity with the Israeli victims. As soon as he had expressed his views, a pro-Palestinian emerged from the pews and rushed forward to verbally attack the pastor. “It’s a lie” he said, and “it [the Hamas attacks] are fake news!” and he continued to rant, until members of the parish council managed to persuade him to leave.

But in the more than 21 months since, there have been more attacks on Pastor Sedlak. Signs were affixed to both the church and the vicarage, with the inscription “Zionist=Fascist”; someone shot at the vicarage with a blank-firing pistol, a sure way to scare the pastor and his family. During the Easter period, so-called “vigils” were held by pro-Hamas protesters in front of Pastor Sedlak’s church, with people yelling about Israel’s “genocide” and calling Paster Sedlak a “Nazi.”

Nor is Pastor Sedlak the only victim of such harassment. Other pastors who have dared to speak out against Hamas, or have expressed sympathy for Israel, have been subject to the same harassment and threats of violence. This is Germany, this is Europe, today, when the Muslim population is about 10% of the total. What will happen when the Muslim numbers multiply and constitute one-quarter, or one-third, of the European population and form the most powerful political bloc both in individual nations and in the European Parliament? What will happen when those Muslim blocs elect not just mayors and members of the national parliaments, but the nations’ leaders?