Дон Андре's blog/

Today I received an e-mail regarding the future of JPG Magazine and it had a very sad tone. On monday JPG will close down because of financial problems. That's the end of it.

I remember that I joined JPG during my Flickr time, but never really participated. I left because of a sad story regarding a change of direction in the magazine, but recently I joined again and looked for a possibility to get published (not that I had much hope or that I really pursued this task!). I've not had much contact with JPG, still I saw and bought a printed magazine only recently in Linz at the station's tobacconist's. Somehow funny to see the Web 2.0 come to print and especially to Europe. I liked how the magazine was less of cameras, lenses and all that technical stuff and focused on photos and creativity. From all the other photography magazines that I have looked through I always see reports of cameras and lens tests and all the (boring) stuff that you get on demand online.

Maybe the world's not ready for this yet, maybe a magazine full of user generated content can never be successful. It remains to be seen how the web and the real world continue to interact. Pure online companies embrace web technologies and thrive its development further. Projects like JPG show that it's still difficult to build the bridge from the virtual side of things.

The conflict in Gaza is getting a lot of press and increasingly hits emotions on all sides. A lot has been tried to gain peace, a lot has failed and if you look at the past it sounds more and more ridiculous to believe the mess, dust and rubble would settle into a nicely ordered house in which palestines and israelis leave peacefully next to each other. To me, that, has always been the goal that the rest of the world has tried to achieve. However due to recent outbreaks of violence the question arises whether such a thing is really possible. It also seems questionable if both can live so close as separate states next to each other. And even more it seems questionable whether that is the goal of Israel and Palestine too? What do they want? Palestines are still pissed that Israel is there at all and want to drive it into the sea and Israels are getting more and more annoyed by Palestine/Hamas attempts to cause damage. There's absolutely no trust between Israel and Palestine. How could these live as two nations next to each other peacefully? How could there be peace in Europe when one country would aim its weapons constantly at its neighbors? Can Palestine win with grenade launchers? Can Israel win with precision bombs? The mounting answer to this question seems to arrive in form of an Israeli ground invasion that will decide who's got a say and will cause a lot of innocent blood to flow into the sea.

That's how I view it:

Palestines: Having struggled a lot after a rude suppression from Israel and receiving little to no international support, they decided to take it upon themselves and elected Hamas as their official leaders. Not recognized by the international community Hamas has since focused and directed the hatred against Israel. However, with no success at all. Rocket attacks do not harm Israel by any means, yet gives Israel lots of execuses to fight back and a big wall has shut the people off from the outside world. They have not gained or won international partners, still they plead for international help and still hope for the international community. Hamas is standing with the back to the wall that Israel built and Palestine has chosen to stay behind Hamas. There's no safe place for them, the isolation has been increased by Israel. Palestine doesn't have political influence and no political lobby, muslim supporters march in the west and demonstrate, but the muslims aren't friend with the western civilization, so who's going to march with them? There are many reports that most still deny the existence of Israel and wish for its complete destruction. The more they wish though, the more it seems they're self-destructing.

Israelis: Occupied a land which was not there own and defended it by force. Israel has since shown that it won't move away and will fight with much more force, more cleverness and more strength to remain where it is and to increse its influence than any other player in the region. It has strong political lobbies that it maintains well and important political support from the international community. It fights back with a total imbalance of the damages and regardeless of the amount of collateral damages. Mossad has a history to kill first and look second. Israel's continued presence and success in the suppression of palestines and other enemies gave its citizen more and more the impression they've got a right to be there. There's hatred by the zionist groups who seem to think they're right to be there stands above the right of others to be there as well. Naturally there's only so much place and one needs to arrange. Israel however doesn't seem to be willing to step back. The amount of force they excert is way over proportions.

The west: The west doesn't really know what to do. Humanitarian aid always seems a good choice, otherwise the influence of the political lobbies is the most directing force to decide its actions. For the western civilizations Israel is one of the first fronts in the fight of an awakened muslim force which is directed against western culture in general as it seems. European countries and the US will certainly not give support to radical islam views as they're in complete opposition to their own. A moderate muslim view and majority has not yet arisen. The palestine denial of the existence of Israel doesn't seem understandable at all, as well as the amount of force Israel is using to achieve its goals. The Israeli military forces seem to be more scrupelous than the US military and yet there's a lot less complaint. The west slips into a big moral problem and it will have to change the scale by which to judge Israel's actions.