It is hard to write this, but it must be done: This is the last printed issue of The Other Israel. There will be no further ones.

We have been grappling with this decision over more than a year, trying various ways of putting it off, but there can be no further reprieve. Several factors have conspired to make it inevitable.

The editorial and technical work on The Other Israel has always depended on the unpaid work of a small nucleus of devoted volunteers. Some of them are now not in the best of health. It is a fact that getting out a new issue was becoming an ever-heavier burden, interfering with newer kinds of peace reporting, at least as important, and that it was becoming increasingly harder to keep any kind of regular schedule.

Indeed, the printing on paper and world-wide airmail distribution of a printed peace-oriented newsletter from Israel is not as vital as it was when The Other Israel was launched in 1983. At that time, it was an almost unique channel of communications with people world-wide who wanted to hear another voice coming out of Israel.

By now, the email and internet revolution has deeply affected us, creating many channels of communications which are far quicker and far cheaper than printed papers sent in envelopes. As a matter of fact, several readers already informed us that the information given via email and web page is quite enough for them, and that they can dispense with the printed page.

Last but not least, the economic crisis of the past year, touching on very many people and institutions, may also have effected the sums reaching this small paper › which never were a mighty stream. Our heartfelt thanks to those who have until the end subscribed, and supported the paper!

And yet, despite the eminently sensible reasons enumerated, it is with a painful pang that we prepare this last and final printed issue.

We go through all the stages of the routine which had been part of our lives for so long, knowing that it is for the last time. It is hard to say goodbye to an old friend, a small faithful paper which was published for more than a quarter of a century, in times of soaring hope and of bitter despair. A paperwhich protested two wars in Lebanon, two in Iraq and one in Gaza, persisted inkeeping on the flame of hope and expressed solidarity with oppressed Palestinians during two big uprisings and countless daily hardships.

It is sad, but - we are not going anywhere. We are changing medium, but we are far from stopping with what we have set out to do so many years ago - to let what is literally the voice of another Israel ring around the world, as loud and clear as we can make it.

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