git pull --rebase overwrites/deletes empty commits

Hello,

I have recently encountered a probable bug in git. We have messages we
want to appear in the log and do an empty commit:

git commit --allow-empty -m "message we want to publish"

After this commit, we do a fetch-rebase in order to pull the
intermediate commits into the local branch before pushing:

git pull --rebase branch origin branch

Problem is: the pull --rebase will delete the empty commit. I see git
rebase has a --keep-empty option. I cannot find such option for the
pull --rebase operation.

Thanks in advance,

Bastian