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Alarmed by their country’s political direction, more Israelis are seeking to move abroad
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Daniel Schleider and his wife, Lior, leave Israel next month, it will be for good — and with a heavy heart.
“I have no doubt I will have tears in my eyes the whole flight.” said Schleider, who was born in Mexico and lived in Israel for a time as a child before returning on his own at 18. Describing himself as “deeply Zionist,” he served in a combat unit in the Israeli army, married an Israeli woman and built a career in an Israeli company.
Yet as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power, assembled a coalition that includes far-right parties and started pushing changes that would erode hallmarks of Israeli democracy, Schleider found himself booking plane tickets and locating an apartment in Barcelona. Spain’s language and low cost of living made the city a good fit, he said, but the real attraction was living in a place where he wouldn’t constantly have to face down the ways that Israel is changing.
Israel’s strength over its 75 years, Schleider said, is “the economy we built by selling our brains.… And yet, in less than half a year, we’ve managed to destroy all that.”
Schleider has been joining the sweeping protests that have taken root across the country in response to the new right-wing government and its effort to strip the Israeli judiciary of much of its power and independence. But while he considered recommitting to his country and fighting the changes rather than fleeing over them, he also accepts the government’s argument that most Israelis voted for something he doesn’t believe in.
Daniel Schleider and his wife Lior are leaving Israel for Barcelona because of the political instability in their country. (Courtesy Schleider)
“I have a lot of internal conflict,” he said about the protests. “Who am I to fight against what the majority has accepted?”
Schleider is far from alone in seeking to leave Israel this year. While Israelis have always moved abroad for various reasons, including business opportunities or to gain experience in particular fields, the pace of planned departures appears to be picking up. No longer considered a form of social betrayal, emigration — known in Hebrew as yerida, meaning descent — is on the table for a wide swath of Israelis right now.
Many of the people weighing emigration were already thinking about it but were catalyzed by the new government, according to accounts from dozens of people in various stages of emigration and of organizations that seek to aid them.
“I’ve already been on the fence for a few years — not in terms of leaving Israel but in terms of relocating for something new,” said Schleider.
“But in the past year, with all the craziness and everything, I realized where the country was going. And after the recent elections, my wife — who had been unconvinced — was the one who took the step and said now she understood where the public is going and what life is going to be like in the country. You could call it the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
“And then when the whole issue of the [judicial] revolution started, we just decided not to wait and to do it immediately.”
Ocean Relocation, which assists people with both immigration to and emigration from Israel, has received more than 100 inquiries a day from people looking to leave since Justice Minister Yariv Levin first presented his proposal for judicial reform back in January. That’s four times the rate of inquiries the organization received last year, according to senior manager Shay Obazanek.
“Never in history has there been this level of demand,” Obazanek said, citing the company’s 80 years’ experience as the “barometer” of movement in and out the country.
Shlomit Drenger, who leads Ocean Relocation’s business development, said those looking to leave come from all walks of life. They include families pushed to leave by the political situation; those investing in real estate abroad as a future shelter, if needed; and Israelis who can work remotely and are worried about the country’s upheaval. Economics are also a concern: With foreign investors issuing dire warnings about Israel’s economy if the judicial reforms go through, companies wary to invest in the country and the shekel already weakening, it could grow more expensive to leave in the future.
The most common destination for the new departures, Drenger said, is Europe, representing representing 70% of moves, compared to 40% in the recent past. Europe’s draws include its convenient time zones, quality-of-life indices, and chiefly, the relative ease in recent years of obtaining foreign passports in countries such as Portugal, Poland and even Morocco. Many Israelis have roots in those countries and are or have been entitled to citizenship today because their family members were forced to leave under duress during the Holocaust or the Spanish Inquisition.
Israelis protesting against the government’s controversial judicial reform bill block the main road leading to the departures area of Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv on March 9, 2023. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
On the other hand, Drenger said, emigration to the United States, where the vast majority of the 1 million Israeli citizens abroad live, has declined significantly. The United States is known for its tough immigration laws and high cost of living in areas with large Israeli and Jewish communities, and even people who have no rights to a foreign passport have an easier time obtaining residency rights in Europe than the United States.
Some Israelis aren’t picking anywhere in particular before leaving. Ofer Stern, 40, quit his job as a tech developer, left Israel and is now traveling around the world before deciding where to settle.
“We’re living in a democracy and that democracy is dependent on demography and I can’t fight it,” he said, alluding to the fact that Orthodox Jews, who tend to be right wing, are the fastest-growing segment of the Israeli population. “The country that I love and that I’ve always loved will not be here in 10 years. Instead, it will be a country that is suited to other people, but not for me.”
While others have already started their emigration process, American-born Marni Mandell, a mother of two living in Tel Aviv, is still on the fence. Her greatest fear is that judicial reforms could open the door to significant changes in civil rights protections — and in so doing break her contract with the country she chose.
“If this so-called ‘reform’ is enacted, which is really tantamount to a coup, it’s hard to imagine that I want my children to grow up to fight in an army whose particularism outweighs the basic human rights that are so fundamental to my values,” Mandell said.
Most people who look into emigrating for political reasons do not end up doing so. In the weeks leading up to the United States’ 2020 presidential election, inquiries to law firms specializing in helping Americans move abroad saw a sharp uptick in inquiries — many of them from Jews fearful about a second Trump administration after then-President Donald Trump declined to unequivocally condemn white supremacists. When President Joe Biden was elected, they largely called off the alarm.
The Trump scenario is not analogous with the Israeli one for several reasons, starting with the fact that the Israelis are responding to an elected government’s policy decisions, not just the prospect of an election result. What’s more, U.S. law contains safeguards designed to prevent any single party or leader from gaining absolute power. Israel has fewer of those safeguards, and many of those appear threatened if the government’s proposals go through.
Casandra Larenas had long courted the idea of moving overseas. “As a childfree person, Israel doesn’t have much to offer and is a really expensive country. I’ve traveled around so I know the quality of life I can reach abroad,” she said. But she said she had always batted away the idea: “I’m still Jewish and my family are still here.”
Clockwise from upper left: Benjamin-Michael Aronov, Casandra Larenas and Ofer Stern are all leaving Israel because of political unrest there. (All photos courtesy)
That all changed with the judicial overhaul, she said. While not against the idea of a reform per se, Laranes is firmly opposed to the way it is being carried out, saying it totally disregards the millions of people on the other side. Chilean-born, Laranes grew up under Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.
“I still remember [it] and I don’t want something like that again,” said Larenas, who has purchased a plane ticket for later this spring and plans to take up residency abroad — though she said she would maintain her citizenship and hoped to return one day.
The departure of liberal and moderate Israelis could have implications on Israel’s political future. Israel does not permit its citizens to vote absentee, meaning that anyone who leaves the country must incur costly, potentially frequent travel to participate in elections — or cede political input altogether.
Benjamin-Michael Aronov, who grew up with Russian parents in the United States, said he was taken aback by how frequently Israelis express shock that he moved to Israel in the first place. “The No. 1 question I get from Israelis is, ‘Why would you move here from the U.S.? We’re all trying to get out of here. There’s no future here.’”
He said he had come to realize that they were right.
“I thought the warnings were something that would truly impact our children or grandchildren but that our lifetime would be spent in an Israeli high-tech, secular golden era. But I’m realizing the longevity of Tel Aviv’s bubble of beaches and parties and crazy-smart, secular people changing the world with technology is maybe even more a fantasy now than when Herzl dreamt it,” Aronov said. “I found my perfect home, a Jewish home, sadly being undone by Jews.”
Not everyone choosing to jump ship is ideologically aligned with the protest movement. Amir Cohen, who asked to use a pseudonym because he has not informed his employers of his plans yet, is a computer science lecturer at Ariel University in the West Bank who voted in the last election for the Otzma Yehudit party chaired by far-right provocateur Itamar Ben-Gvir. Cohen was willing to put aside his ideological differences with the hared Orthodox parties if it meant achieving political stability — but was soon disillusioned.
“None of it is working. And now we’re on our way to civil war, it’s that simple. I figured, ‘I don’t need this nonsense, there are plenty of places in the world for me to go,’” he said.
Thousands of Israeli protesters rally against the Israeli goverment’s judicial overhaul bills in Tel Aviv, March 4, 2023. (Gili Yaari Flash90)
Cohen stuck with the country after one of his brothers was killed in the 2014 Gaza War. Now, he said, his other brothers have recently followed his lead and applied for Hungarian passports in an effort to find a way to move abroad permanently.
“I’m not alone,” he said. “Most of my friends and family feel the same way.”
Others still, like Omer Mizrahi, view themselves as apolitical. A contractor from Jerusalem, Mizrahi, 27, headed to San Diego, California, a month ago as a result of the reform. Mizrahi, who eschewed casting a vote in the last election, expressed a less common impetus for leaving: actual fear for his life. Mizrahi described sitting in traffic jams in Jerusalem and realizing that if a terror attack were to unfold — “and let’s be honest, there are at least one or two every week” — he wouldn’t be able to escape in time because he was caught in a gridlock. “Our politicians can’t do anything about it because they’re too embroiled in a war of egos.”
Now 7,500 miles away, Mizrahi says he feels like he’s finally living life. “I sit in traffic now and I’m happy as a clam. Everything’s calm.”
Back in Israel, Schleider is making his final preparations for leaving, advertising his Tesla for sale on Facebook this week. He remains hopeful that the massive anti-government protests will make a difference. In the meantime, though, his one-way ticket is scheduled for April 14.
“I dream of coming back, but I don’t know that it will ever happen,” he said. “We made a decision that was self-serving, but that doesn’t mean we’re any less Zionist.”
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.
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Belgium’s Jewish Community Sounds Alarm on Rising Antisemitism After Liège Synagogue Attack
Police secure the site of a synagogue damaged by an explosion early on Monday, in Liege, Belgium, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Just days after a synagogue in Liège, Belgium was struck in an apparent antisemitic bombing, the local Jewish community is sounding the alarm over a surge in hostility and targeted violence against Jews across the country.
In an interview with the local news outlet La Première on Tuesday, the president of the Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium (CCOJB), Yves Oschinsky, called on government authorities to deploy soldiers to protect Jewish sites and institutions if police protection proves insufficient.
Following the attack on a synagogue in Liège, a city in the country’s eastern region, early Monday morning, Oschinsky warned that the Jewish community faces a far greater threat than authorities publicly acknowledge, emphasizing that Jewish institutions remain at heightened risk.
He also slammed the government for failing to appoint a national coordinator to fight antisemitism, while urging political parties and officials to take urgent, concrete action to protect the Jewish community.
Like most countries across the Western world, Belgium has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the Belgian Interfederal Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism and Discrimination (Unia), which tracks antisemitism nationwide, 192 reports of antisemitism and Holocaust denial were filed in 2025, following a record 270 cases in 2024 — marking two consecutive years well previous years.
Before the Oct. 7 atrocities, only 31 antisemitic cases had been reported in Belgium in 2022.
On Tuesday, the Brussels-based Jonathas Institute released a new report warning that antisemitic prejudices remain widespread and deeply entrenched in Belgium.
“The results are clear: the study highlights that the population of Brussels continues to hold many antisemitic stereotypes ‘inherited from the past’ of a religious or political nature,” the institute said in a statement.
The newly released report found that 40 percent of respondents in Brussels agreed with the claim that Jews control the financial and banking sectors, while one in four blamed Jews for various economic crises.
According to the study, these stereotypes are “sometimes expressed as obvious truths” without overt hostility, a pattern the report warns makes them especially prone to being trivialized, particularly online.
More than one in five Belgians believe Jews are “not Belgians like the others,” while 21 percent label Jews an “unassimilable race.”
“The attack on the synagogue in Liège confirms that it is no longer just antisemitic speech that has been unleashed, but antisemitic acts as well. This aggressive antisemitism continues to rise,” the institute said.
The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents believe Jews form a “close-knit or closed community.”
In relation to the war in Gaza, 39 percent of Belgians claim that “Jews are doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to them.” This view is particularly common among 18- to 35-year-olds, who are more likely to compare Israel’s actions to those of the Nazis.
Within far-right circles, 69 percent believe Jews exploit the Holocaust, while 72 percent say Jews use antisemitism for their own interests.
Based on these findings, the Jonathas Institute urged authorities and policymakers to strengthen historical education, improve digital literacy, and remain vigilant against narratives that normalize or justify hostility toward Jews, warning that such discourse can ultimately spark real-world violence.
The institute also calls for formalizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, aiming to better distinguish “legitimate criticism of Israel” from “forms of anti-Zionism that revive antisemitic patterns.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
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Iran, Russia Push Disinformation to Spread Antisemitism, Undermine the West
Iranian protesters carry a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a Yemeni flag as they burn an Israeli flag during an anti-US and anti-British protest in front of the British embassy in downtown Tehran, Iran, Jan. 12, 2024. Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
Iran and Russia have both used propaganda and disinformation to promote antisemitic narratives as part of an effort to undermine the West, according to analysts who this week exposed some of their methods and the damage they have caused.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center on Tuesday hosted an online briefing with experts who laid out how the Islamic regime in Iran deploys a variety of propaganda as weapons. One day earlier, the Gino Germani Institute for Social Sciences and Strategic Studies published an in-depth report detailing the history of Russia’s disinformation expertise.
“There is the kinetic battlefield, of course, but there’s also the information battlefield, the war for hearts and minds. Modern wars are fought not only with missiles, but with memes, not only with military force, but with persuasion,” said Vlad Khaykin, executive vice president of social impact and partnerships at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, opening the briefing.
“The Iranian regime and the networks aligned with it across Russia, China, and various proxy movements have spent decades building a global propaganda architecture designed for moments exactly like this,” Khaykin warned.
Rachel Kantz Feder, a senior researcher at the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, and Jacki Alexander, CEO and president for media watchdog Honest Reporting, offered their analyses of the subversive media techniques utilized by Tehran to advance the regime’s ideological objectives.
Speaking from Israel amid the current war with Iran, Kantz Feder prefaced her response by saying, “I hope I won’t have to run off for a siren,” referencing the warning that Israeli residents of incoming rocket fire receive telling them to seek shelter. In the briefing’s final 20 minutes, Kantz Feder had to do just that, apologizing and leaving to take cover from Iranian drone and missile fire.
Before the session’s interruption, Kantz Feder defined information warfare as “the strategic use of information and communications to influence perceptions and decision-making systems.” She said this can include “disinformation, cyber attacks, and good old-fashioned propagandistic efforts. And it is so central, I think, to Iran’s strategy right now because it’s so effective. And I think that the Iranian regime is seeing real yields from it, certainly in the realm of influencing certain media ecosystems.”
“We find that actually Iran started to forge ties with American figures from the far right and far left as well already by the end of the 1990s,” Kantz Feder noted, explaining that online dynamics today have roots going back decades.
One example she cited of this cultural diplomacy was the critical success of Iranian filmmakers in the 1990s, which the regime leveraged by holding international film festivals to try and influence Hollywood.
According to Alexander, the same online influencers who promoted falsehoods of Israel intentionally targeting civilians and committing a genocide in Gaza have now pivoted to comparable rhetoric about the current conflict with Iran.
“And these networks all work together to amplify each other. Each of their posts will get millions of views,” Alexander said. “And then ultimately that seeps into the podcast network. Tucker Carlson will pick it up. Candace Owens will pick it up.”
Owens and Carlson have emerged as two of the most prominent anti-Israel commentators in the US, often using their platforms to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The Honest Reporting chief also revealed Iran’s targeting of those who eschew the ideological extremes.
“You start having situations like mainstream Western American news unironically using things like Fars News Agency, Iranian state TV, as a legitimate source without letting their viewers know that this is actually Iranian state propaganda,” she explained.
Khaykin asked Kantz Feder to explain the role of antisemitism in both the Islamic regime’s ideology and its propaganda techniques. She described a recent development that “officially, Iran has tried to make a distinction between Zionism and Jews in its revolutionary ideology. This is actually something that in the past few years we’re seeing less of. This is new.”
“The distinction between Zionists as an enemy and Jews as the enemy of Iran is starting to erode as the regime looks for new ways to legitimize its rule and conjure up images of Iran’s enemies and what they’re facing,” she continued. “In terms of the influence operations directed abroad, this is essential.”
The Jew-hate acts as a glue, enabling what Kantz Feder described historically as how “Iran starts to position itself as a hub for transnational extremist far-right networks. And then so, of course, we saw that come to fruition with the Holocaust conferences.”
In 2006, Holocaust deniers gathered for a two-day event titled “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” which organizers characterized as based in science. Attendees included former KKK leader David Duke, Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, and members of Jews United Against Israel. Duke said at the time that “it’s a shame that Iran, a country we often call oppressive, has to give this opportunity for free speech.” He also described Israel as “a terrorist state” and “the No. 1 terrorist state in the world.”
According to Kantz Feder, antisemitism, “whether it be the Holocaust denial or other forms of it,” is the “entry point and it binds together a lot of these different ideas, movements and ideological orientations.”
Agreeing with Kantz Feder’s emphasis on Iran’s role in promoting Holocaust denial, Alexander said that “what they’re doing is they’re poisoning the information, the information sources, the wells where people are getting their information.”
Alexander explained the downstream impacts of what she called antisemitic “poisoning of information,” noting that “61 percent of adults worldwide are getting information increasingly from AI, and 36 percent of those are using it weekly … And there has been a movement for about 15 years to poison the source that AI then goes to for information that most prominently is Wikipedia, though not entirely.”
Describing Iran’s Wikipedia infiltration efforts, Alexander said that Iran is “now paying a new group of editors on Wikipedia to start changing even further information that is there so that when you go to AI to ask it a question, you’re going to get a garbage answer. And it will be things like Holocaust denial or erasing Jewish sovereignty and history from the state of Israel going back 3,000 years ago.”
Alexander described how a prominent Russian disinformation narrative since the 1970s had begun to recirculate online. “You know what narrative has started trending again? ‘Zionism is racism,’” she said. “We’ve gone back 50 years, and it’s because Russia has a deep connection to this.”
In November 1975, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism — the national movement of the Jewish people to reestablish a state in their ancient homeland — with “racism,” reflecting long-standing antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Israel agendas pushed by the Soviet Union. The measure was ultimately overturned in 1991
For understanding the connection, Massimiliano Di Pasquale, an associate researcher at the Gino Germani institute and director of the Ukraine Observatory, wrote “Antisemitism and Russian Active Measures From the Tsars to Putin,” a 141-page report three years in the making.
Translated from Italian, the Gino Germani Institute described how the study “traces the direct link between the tsarist and Soviet eras and the regime of Vladimir Putin in the specific evolution of instrumental antisemitism and demonstrates how the Kremlin continues today, in its cognitive war and in its active measures, to use false historians and conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to feed hatred, distort perceptions and destabilize Western democratic values and systems.”
According to the Institute, “Di Pasquale shows how Russian antisemitic narratives come to justify military aggression in Ukraine, or how, after the Oct. 7 attack, Moscow instrumentalized the Israel-Hamas conflict to pursue three main objectives: strategic distraction, erosion of Western cohesion, double-standard accusations.”
Di Pasquale’s report details the history of Soviet Russia’s disinformation turn against the Jewish state, noting the 1967-1982 period under Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which “was characterized by a period of heated antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism. It was during this period that Moscow helped sow the seeds of the current anti-American and anti-Israeli hatred in the Arab and Muslim world — hatred that resurfaced in full vehemence after Oct. 7, 2023 — both through a series of sophisticated and covert KGB operations and through a massive international propaganda campaign that began in 1967 and continued until 1988.”
Di Pasquale writes that in the 16 years (1967-1982) during which Yuri Andropov, future general secretary of the party, headed the KGB, “Zionism was second only to the United States in terms of the Kremlin’s active measures.”
According to the report, the five antisemitic propaganda narratives Andropov chose to unleash around 1967 were “Jews (Zionists) are responsible for antisemitism; Zionist organizations worldwide are involved in espionage activities; Zionism is a Trojan horse for imperialism and racism in the Third World; Jews collaborated with the Nazis during World War II; and reversal of the Holocaust, i.e., Israelis as Nazis.”
The report cites Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, highest ranking defector from the Soviet bloc and former spymaster to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who called Andropov “the father of a new era of disinformation that revived antisemitism and spawned international terrorism against the United States and Israel.”