BOORSEE

berlin — U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will discuss increased reports of antisemitic acts in both countries over the last year as war has raged in the Middle East when they meet Friday in Berlin, a Biden administration official told reporters on the eve of Biden’s state visit to Germany.

“This is an area where the United States and Germany have worked very closely,” said the official, who was not named as a condition of the Wednesday night briefing.

The official added that while Biden is unlikely to hold a specific event centered on antisemitism during his one-day visit, the issue is “very important to President Biden, and one that he has, that we have, discussed with the German government over the years and continue to do so.”

The official did not give any more details on engagements or plans.

Watchdogs have sounded the alarm in both countries: According to a German government report, antisemitic incidents rose by about 83% last year. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League has said that U.S. antisemitic incidents “skyrocketed” in the months after Hamas militants attacked Israel last October.

Biden has clearly tied the recent rise in anti-Jewish acts to a growing backlash over his staunch support of Israel.

In May, he spoke at the first Holocaust Remembrance Day since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. He warned of a “ferocious” rise in antisemitic incidents and said that, at the height of university protests, “Jewish students [were] blocked, harassed, attacked, while walking to class.”

He said protesters used “antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.”

Earlier this month, he spoke of his belief that “without an Israel, every Jew in the world’s security is less stable.”

He added, “It doesn’t mean that Jewish leadership doesn’t have to be more progressive than it is, but it does mean it has to exist, and that’s what worries me most about what’s going on now.”

Germany’s World War II history makes it particularly sensitive to this type of hatred, but critics say it has taken steps that stifle legitimate criticism.

In November, weeks into the Gaza conflict, a German museum canceled a show by a South African artist after she expressed support for the Palestinian cause. Candice Breitz, the artist, who is Jewish, called the act another example of “Germany’s increasingly entrenched habit of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism against intellectuals and cultural workers of various descriptions.”

In March, police canceled a conference of pro-Palestinian activists because a planned speaker had previously made antisemitic remarks. They blocked him from entering Germany and cut power to the Berlin building where conference participants had gathered to watch him on a livestream.

On the first anniversary of the war, Scholz warned against growing anti-Jewish sentiment and affirmed his support for Israel.

“We will never accept antisemitism and blind hatred of Israel. The Jewish people here in Germany have the full solidarity of our state,” he said.

A difficult definition

Key to managing antisemitism is the question of whether criticism of Israel is, by definition, antisemitic.

The Federal Association of Research and Information Centers for Antisemitism, Germany’s antisemitism watchdog, uses a working definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, describing antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.” Although its definition of antisemitism does not mention Israel, many of its cited examples of antisemitism do.

The U.S. State Department also uses that definition, but when the White House produced its first strategy on antisemitism last year, before the start of the Gaza war, the strategy was not based solely on that definition.

One Jewish rights group that worked with the White House on the strategy said the decision to codify the definition of antisemitism “would only have made it harder to recognize and respond to antisemitic attacks in context” and “would have opened the door to infringement of First Amendment rights.”

That group, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, also opposed a proposed bill in Congress using the group’s definition, with CEO Rabbi Jill Jacobs saying in a statement: “The profoundly misguided Antisemitism Awareness Act does nothing to keep Jews safe, while also threatening the civil liberties fundamental to this country.”

Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, who led the rollout of the White House strategy, said it is more important to look at what antisemitism does than what it is.

“At its core, antisemitism divides us, erodes our trust in government, institutions and one another,” he said. “It threatens our democracy while undermining our American values of freedom, community and decency. Antisemitism delivers simplistic, false and dangerous narratives that have led to extremists perpetrating deadly violence against Jews.”

History professor Jonathan Elukin of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, said the definition of antisemitism has shifted over the centuries. He focuses on antisemitism in the medieval and early modern periods — before Israel was founded.

This iteration of antisemitism in the U.S., he told VOA, is “more associated with a kind of larger sense of an anti-Western, anti-modern kind of feeling, both on the far right and on the far left. They both seem to be converging in some ways on resentment, hatred, suspicion, anxiety about the Jews.”

As for the sentiment on the far right, he said, “I think it’s more a kind of tribal nostalgic sense that America is supposed to be or was thought to be kind of a Christian nation.”

He said the debate over definitions obscures a problem.

“Does it even matter whether it fits some kind of arbitrary notion of antisemitism, which in itself is a very arbitrary and time-bound definition?” he asked.

But, he said, talking about the problem is a start.

“In the short term, obviously it requires education, activism, political leadership to draw the line at acceptable or what’s not acceptable expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment,” he said. “Both here and abroad.”

Kim Lewis contributed to this report.
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The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing mounting criticism over the rise of gender-based violence in Turkey, which ranks among the world’s worst countries for violence against women. 

Just last week in Istanbul, a 19-year-old Turkish man killed two young women — first, his 19-year-old girlfriend at his home, and then a woman, also 19, whom he met in the city. He beheaded the second victim and threw her head over a wall onto a crowded street before taking his own life. 

Critics contend that the traditional values-based policies of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) are contributing to a growing number of femicides — the killing of women — and Turkey’s entrenched domestic violence problem.  

“We Will Stop Femicide Platform,” a Turkish advocacy group known by the initials KCDP, reported 3,185 women were killed by men between 2008 and 2019, and at least 1,499 from 2020 to September 2024, with the number of femicides rising each year. The deaths of about 1,030 women were also found suspicious.  

More than 1.4 million women reported they had faced domestic abuse between January 2013 and July 2024, the Turkish Minute news site reported, citing data received from the Family and Social Services Ministry by the daily newspaper Birgün. 

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Istanbul and other cities in Turkey last week accusing Erdogan of failing to protect women from violence. 

In the facing of such accusations, Erdogan vowed last week to strengthen legal regulations concerning crimes against women and children and promised to set up a new unit at the Justice Ministry to monitor such cases.  

However, the Bursa Women’s Platform, which organized sit-in protests in Turkey’s Bursa province, accused Turkish authorities of acting only on “social media reactions rather than the testimonies of those subjected to violence.” 

Human Rights Foundation, a New York-headquartered international watchdog, accused the Erdogan government this week of failing to “adequately prevent femicide and violence against women, children, and gender minorities.” 

The Turkish government exercises “increasing control over social media platforms” posing “serious threats to freedom of expression,” the HRF said Thursday in a letter to the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

Independent research published this year in Frontiers in Psychology argued that the Turkish government’s tightening grip over what people can see in the media and the ruling party’s gender policies based on the stereotypes of women’s societal role and appearances contribute to the stigmatization of feminism and dehumanization of women. 

Erdogan’s own words have been cited as contributing to the problem. In widely quoted remarks made in 2014, he said it is “against nature” to “put men and women on equal footing,” and argued that feminists do not understand the importance of motherhood.  

“President Erdogan and the AKP have increasingly taken an explicitly anti-feminist stance, in particular over the last decade. Consequently, anti-feminism in Turkey has taken on a top-down outlook,” said a recent article in the peer-reviewed academic journal Mediterranean Politics. 

The article said an “environment created by the AKP” had empowered anti-feminist actors in Turkey to push back against legal reforms advocating for gender equality and women’s rights. 

The paper uncovered an AKP-linked Turkish network of social media accounts including conservative civil society organizations, media representatives, social media influencers, writers and academics, celebrities” who articulate and amplify anti-feminist sentences, while exerting “significant influence in political sphere.”  

VoxEU, a forum for columns by leading economists, published a study in March finding that victim-blaming is common in Turkish society, along with an attitude that a woman should not provoke her husband. 

Hardliners from Erdogan’s party have argued that a man’s testimony should be given more weight than a woman’s in domestic violence cases.  

Turkish judges hand down lenient sentences to domestic abusers, or otherwise impose minimal sanctions against abusers who violate civil protection orders. Law enforcement, the analysts and activists say, is often slow to react to instances when these civil protection orders are violated.  

KCDP and others have documented instances when women were killed by men against whom they had taken out restraining orders. Women are particularly prone to facing violence at home, and the perpetrators are overwhelmingly spouses, men they are romantically involved with, family members, or other acquaintances.  

In July 2021, Turkey withdrew from The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention. Turkey was the first country to sign the Istanbul Convention in May 2011.  

Turkish authorities claimed to be acting because the Istanbul Convention had been “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality,” which it said, “is incompatible with” the country’s “social and family values.” 

On October 8, Erdogan said Turkey’s “withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention has not had the slightest negative impact on women’s rights,” adding “there is no opposition party that can teach us a lesson on women’s rights” or “help us strengthen women’s status.” 

Republican People’s Party leader Ozgur Ozel disagreed. 

“This government has not only failed to protect women and children but is also stepping back from positive actions. The clearest example is the sudden withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in 2021,” Turkiye Today cited Ozel as saying on October 8. 
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TBILISI, GEORGIA — An uneasy calm has descended on the streets of Tbilisi ahead of a crucial election on October 26, widely seen as a referendum on Georgia’s future.

Beneath the surface, there is palpable tension.

Campaign billboards, most for the ruling Georgian Dream Party, vie for voters’ attention with countless European Union, NATO and Ukrainian flags hanging from windows and graffitied on the city’s red brick buildings alongside anti-Russian slogans.

Six months ago, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Tbilisi to protest the reintroduction of a so-called “foreign agent” law, which compels any organization receiving more than 20% of its funding from overseas to register with the government and submit to detailed financial investigation.

A brutal crackdown on the demonstrations prompted Western powers to impose sanctions on some Georgian officials.

Critics say the law mimics Russian legislation used to silence political opponents and independent media. The Georgian government insists the law is necessary to show who is funding political organizations.

Defiance

The foreign agent law came into force in September. However, most foreign-funded civil society groups have refused to comply. Dozens of the organizations are now working together to act as election monitors amid fears that Georgian Dream may not easily give up power, even if they lose the election.

Among the chief targets of the foreign agent law is Eka Gigauri, head of the anti-corruption group Transparency International. Alongside other prominent civil society leaders, she appears on government propaganda posters, accused of selling out Georgia and getting rich on foreign money. Their faces are marked with red crosses.

“This is a matter of dignity,” Gigauri told VOA. “We are not spies. We are not undermining the interests of the country. We are the patriots of this country, and we served this country and the people of this country for many years.”

Transparency International has refused to register as a foreign agent, risking prosecution and heavy fines for the organization and its staff.

“We are using all the legal tools, everything, to fight, to resist, not to comply, to inform the citizens about the wrongdoings of the government,” she said. “Still, we see that at any time, the government can enforce this law.

“And now especially, when there is this preelection period and the majority of the NGOs are involved in observing the elections, definitely it will be [an] additional obstacle for us if it happens. However, it did not happen yet.”

Transparency International said most foreign-funded civil society organizations have refused to comply with the new law, with only 41 organizations having so far registered as foreign agents.

Free media

Tabula Media, an independent multimedia organization, is one of several groups seeking to circumvent the legislation.

“We had to reestablish the organization in an EU country — Estonia — which deeply complicates financial operations,” Tabula editor-in-chief Levan Sutidze told VOA.

“We are familiar with this path and where it leads. It leads to Russia, to the complete silencing of critical voices, to the annihilation of independent media outlets and NGOs, and it will have catastrophic consequences in the future,” Sutidze said. “Even if the situation worsens, we will not submit to this insult.”

The investigative organization Realpolitika has also registered its headquarters in Tallinn, Estonia, in a bid to avoid prosecution under the foreign agent law.

“For now, this law does not apply to us. However, this could change after the election,” said editor-in-chief Aka Zarqua.

“Pressure from the international community and the backlash within Georgian society have both contributed to the government not fully enforcing this legislation before the election, and we can see their partial retreat,” Zarqua said. “It’s clear that October 26 will be decisive in this regard.”

Backlash

For some civil society groups, navigating the foreign agent law has been a traumatic process.

The pro-democracy organization Shame was founded in 2019 after the ruling Georgian Dream Party allowed a visiting Russian prime minister to address lawmakers from the speaker’s chair in the Georgian parliament, prompting widespread outrage.

In August, the organization decided to comply with the foreign agent law and register with the government “because we believed there was no other way to save the organization and continue its work if Georgian Dream somehow managed to win the election and the law remained enforced,” according to Dachi Imedadze, Shame’s head of strategy.

The organization, however, reversed its decision after a bitter public backlash.

“It escalated into conspiracy theories and personal attacks, with people calling us traitors,” Imedadze said.

Shame is now campaigning to get young people to vote.

“One-third of young people, aged 18 to 25, do not participate in elections. This represents approximately 250,000 potential voters,” Imedadze told VOA. “Our main target audience is this group, many of whom will be voting for the first time in this election.”

‘Russian swamp’

Nino Lomjaria, a former public defender of Georgia, now heads Georgia’s European Orbit, a civil society group partly funded by the U.S.-based Soros Foundation.

Lomjaria and her team have traveled across the country urging people to turn out and vote. Their election leaflets mimic the election ballot but offer only two choices.

“It says: ‘Are you choosing European well-being or the Russian swamp?’” she said.

Georgian Dream insists it is not pro-Russian and wants to join the EU. Party leaders say they are seeking to improve relations with Moscow to avoid further conflict, accusing critics and rivals of being part of a “global war party” that is seeking to profit from war with Russia.

Lomjaria scoffs at that accusation.

“We know who starts wars. We know that the ‘global war party’ is Russia. It’s not the West. And for us, the European Union is the safe place. That’s why we want to join this community, because we consider that being the member of the European Union, being the member of NATO, this is something where we will find peace and stability,” she told VOA.

Election monitors

Georgia’s European Orbit has joined a coalition of nongovernmental organizations that are planning to monitor the election, “which is composed of up to 30 organizations,” Lomjaria said.

“And our plan is to be present at every polling station to observe the whole process of voting and vote tabulation. We will have evidence of how elections have been conducted in this country, and we will litigate if we find out that there was some manipulation or electoral fraud,” she said.

Gigauri of Transparency International doubts Georgia’s judicial system is robust enough to cope with such a crisis.

“The state institutions in Georgia are captured. This is a very unfortunate fact and the reality. Definitely it’s very difficult for everyone to operate. But we also see that more and more, it is very difficult for those institutions to deal with the resistance from the people,” Gigauri told VOA.

The government insists it will respect the election result.

“Georgian Dream is based on democratic principles, and therefore it will respect every decision made by the Georgian people. We will accept the people’s decision, whatever it may be,” Nikoloz Samkharadze, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA in an interview.

“At the same time, I want to emphasize that we are confident the vast majority of Georgians will support Georgian Dream.”
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Meta’s independent content watchdog said Thursday there were “serious questions” about how the social media giant deals with anti-immigrant content, particularly in Europe. 

The Oversight Board, established by Meta in 2020 and sometimes called its “supreme court,” launched a probe after seeing a “significant number” of appeals over anti-immigrant content. 

The board has chosen two symbolic cases — one from Germany and the other from Poland — to assess whether Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is following human rights law and its own policies on hate speech. 

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, co-chair of the board and a former Danish prime minister, said it was “critical” to get the balance right between free speech and protection of vulnerable groups. 

“The high number of appeals we get on immigration-related content from across the EU tells us there are serious questions to ask about how the company handles issues related to this, including the use of coded speech,” she said in a statement. 

The first piece of content to be assessed by the board was posted in May on a Facebook page claiming to be the official account of Poland’s far-right Confederation party. 

An image depicts Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk looking through a peephole with a black man approaching him from behind, accompanied by text suggesting his government would allow immigration to surge. 

Meta rejected an appeal from a user to take down the post despite the text including a word considered by some as a racial slur. 

In the other case, an apparently AI-generated image was posted on a German Facebook page showing a blond-haired blue-eyed woman, a German flag and a stop sign. 

The accompanying text likens immigrants to “gang rape specialists.”  

A user complained but Meta decided to not to remove the post.  

“The board selected these cases to address the significant number of appeals, especially from Europe, against content that shares views on immigration in ways that may be harmful towards immigrants,” the watchdog said in a statement. 

The board said it wanted to hear from the public and would spend “the next few weeks” discussing the issue before publishing its decision. 

Decisions by the board, funded by a trust set up by Meta, are not binding, though the company has promised to follow its rulings. 
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US President Joe Biden heads to Germany on Thursday, a week later than planned and on a compressed timeline after Hurricane Milton grounded him last week. Both he and Germany’s leader have been facing mounting pressure over their support for Ukraine — both having recently announced new security packages. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports.
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