the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 3, 2016
There are only two parties whose candidates have much chance to be elected this year.
But that doesn’t mean that either party represents the majority of people in this country, working people.
In fact, both parties represent only one class: the capitalist class. One class, two parties. Often, the same bankers, same corporate big wigs, same financial speculators give to both parties. And that small wealthy class of people calls the tune that both parties dance to. Both parties opened the door to real estate speculators and mortgage scams. Both parties drained the money supposed to go to public schools, giving it to “developers.” Both parties carried out the wars that have torn up several generations of young Americans forced by the economy to join the army, while laying waste to large parts of the globe. Both parties presided over an economy that concentrated lavish amounts of wealth at one end, and destitution for a very large number at the other end. Both parties poisoned the water Flint drinks. And both parties imprisoned generations of young people instead of providing jobs for them.
And so, is this what we are supposed to go on living with? These two parties that represent a class which is our enemy? Well, no!
In Michigan this year, there is a new party on the ballot, the Working Class Party. Some dozens of people spent hundreds of hours looking for people who agreed they are fed up with this two-party system.
But the people who worked to get this new party on the ballot insisted that something more was needed: a party that recognizes the power working people have when they organize to fight, a party that believes the working class can impose its own answers to the problems capitalist society has created.
They said they wanted what did not exist–a party of the working class.
Fifty-thousand people agreed enough to sign petitions so that this new party, Working Class Party, could appear on the ballot in Michigan in November.
That doesn’t mean that the two-party hold on the election process has been broken. Not in the least. It doesn’t mean that this new party will even be heard all through the state. After all, to be heard all through the state, money is needed, lots of money. Access to the media is needed. But the media is owned by that same capitalist class that owns the two parties: newspapers, TV, radio and even a great deal of what appears on the internet is directly controlled by that capitalist class.
And it certainly doesn’t mean that a real mass working class party, the kind of party which is needed, will come into existence just like that. A real working class party will be built by working people in the process of carrying out struggles, just like working people built their unions almost a century ago by carrying out fights around the problems they faced.
Nonetheless, something significant happened in Michigan this year–a party that openly declares its working class allegiance was put on the ballot. Its name says it: Working Class Party. That name on the ballot can be a rallying point.
All those workers who want to see a party of their own class can say what they want by voting for the candidates of the Working Class Party.
Everyone, anywhere in the state, can vote for Mary Anne Hering, for State Board of Education. People in parts of Washtenaw and Wayne counties can vote for Gary Walkowicz in Michigan’s 12th Congressional district. People in other parts of Wayne County, including part of Detroit, can vote for Sam Johnson in Michigan’s 13th Congressional district.
Vote and get others to vote. The capitalist media may ignore the Working Class Party, but ordinary people can spread the word.
Some dozens of people worked to get those signatures putting Working Class Party on the ballot. Hundreds can work now to make sure that Working Class Party continues to exist.
Oct 3, 2016
In early September, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that Wells Fargo had agreed to pay 185 million dollars to settle claims against it. The bank pressured employees to open unneeded accounts for customers, order credit cards without customers’ permission, forge client signatures on paperwork, and open up fake e-mail accounts.
The scale of the fraud is vast. Between 2011 and 2015, Wells Fargo admitted that it had pressured its employees to open roughly 1.5 million bank accounts and apply for 565,000 credit cards that had not been authorized by customers. If the employees didn’t do this, management fired them.
And for what? So that bank executives could create the illusion that business was growing, and therefore pump up the bank’s stock price. This can only enrich big stockholders, as well as top bank executives, whose compensation is to a great extent based on the price of the company stock.
Wells Fargo also hit customers with extra fees and penalties on bank accounts and credit cards that they had never agreed to or authorized. And when they didn’t pay these fraudulent fees and penalties, or were just late, the bank punished them with credit downgrades, costing them a lot more money.
Wells Fargo, the second largest bank in the world by some measures, controlling two trillion dollars in assets, was carrying out a blatant consumer rip-off, similar to what the banks pulled during the subprime housing bubble. Just like during the subprime bubble, the government authorities and all of the regulators of the banks, from the Treasury Department to the Federal Reserve, turned a blind eye to it–even though there were plenty of whistle blowers amongst the employees, who came forward and reported what was going on.
Bank customers who tried to sue Wells Fargo failed. The judges threw all legal suits out–refusing to even hear them, claiming that the courts had no jurisdiction, because bank customers had to go to arbitration set up by ... Wells Fargo, itself!
Make no mistake: all this was going on right out in the open. The Los Angeles Times even ran an expose of Wells Fargo in December 2013. But there was no follow up.
Finally, last year, the City Attorney of Los Angeles announced that he was suing Wells Fargo for fraudulent practices. And federal regulators finally stepped in. The regulators now let Wells Fargo pretend that it is cleaning house by firing low-level bank employees, mainly bank tellers, who earn about $12 per hour. Eventually, Wells Fargo fired 5,300 low-level bank employees–scapegoats for the real crooks at the head of the company.
Since then, the politicians of both parties have jumped on the bandwagon. In response, the Wells Fargo Board of Directors announced that it was taking back 41 million dollars in compensation already granted to its CEO John Strumpf over the last five years.
What a farce. Poor Strumpf will be left with “only” 60 million dollars in pay for those five years. He will be able to fall back on another 200 million dollars in stock that the bank had already rewarded him. Compare that to the 5,300 fired employees, who were left with nothing.
None of this is an oversight–it’s just how the whole parasitic economic system functions. The entire capitalist class is one big vampire sucking blood out of society.
Oct 3, 2016
There has been a lot of talk about Ford moving to build the Focus from MAP to Mexico. Politicians have talked about it. Ford has said they will build other vehicles at MAP. The media has highlighted this move about jobs being lost or not.
But nobody will talk about the main way jobs are outsourced in the auto industry–Ford, GM and Chrysler outsourcing work INSIDE this country. In the case of Ford, tens of thousands of jobs that Ford workers used to do are being done by workers at Faurecia, Hydrochem, DMS, CEVA, Bridgewater, Tower and many other companies. These jobs didn’t go to Mexico. Most of these jobs are right here in Michigan. But the jobs pay half or less of what Ford workers make.
This is what no politicians or the media will talk about.
Oct 3, 2016
Sewage has leaked into the Chinquapin stream, running through a residential area of northeast Baltimore.
The Department of Public Works not only knew, but an official admitted it would likely be three more years before the Department got around to repairing that old water main.
Yet children play in that stream every day. This summer, the Department of Parks and Recreation even had a picnic there for children.
No one in Baltimore believes this leakage is a new problem. For at least 14 years Baltimore has been hearing about fixing the water and sewage pipes, and drivers have been dodging repair crews.
All these repairs were given as the reason for TRIPLING water and sewer bills to Baltimore home owners and businesses. Yet after every rain storm, it turns out sewage is still leaking into the waterways.
It seems that maintenance had not been kept up for years, even decades, on water pipes and sewers. It became such an embarrassment that the federal government came in pretending to do something. The consent decree signed way back in 2002 gave the city 14 years to complete the work. Then when the city didn’t finish, this year, it was given another six years–in which to finish the work without paying more fines.
But when the Department of Public Works went to begin this work, it turned out no one had a clue where the lines were. Records had been lost or were never created in the first place. That means, maintenance was not being done for decades.
The current lack of progress might never have been known if an environmental group hadn’t joined a lawsuit against the city. Bluewater Baltimore showed what had not been done on the pipes and how many discharges of pollution were not even recorded.
But despite consent decrees, despite all kinds of lawsuits, the public services needed–whether water treatment, sewers, roads, tunnels, bridges or schools–always end up short of funds. The very services we pay for are not provided.
If there were any justification for government, it would surely be the carrying out of such obvious services. But these are just what Baltimore, and other jurisdictions, fail to provide.
Every one of them–those politicians who pretend to represent the population–need to be pushed aside, replaced by the population deciding for itself how to use all the resources of society.
Oct 3, 2016
Speaking of the flu, a new study showed that the number of flu cases drops a lot in cities that pass laws mandating a paid sick leave. In other words, where more companies don’t offer paid sick leave, more workers feel forced to go to work sick and spread the disease to their co-workers and customers.
No worker needs a survey to know that you should stay home and rest when you are sick. It’s our bosses who always put pressure on us not to take sick days.
Oct 3, 2016
In September, California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation granting agricultural workers the same right to overtime pay as other California workers. More than 825,000 farm workers will be affected by this law.
In 1938 the Federal Labor Standards Act laid out the overtime compensation rules, but excluded most agricultural workers from these benefits to appease the Southern post-civil-war plantations that still employed mainly black farm workers. That should come as no surprise in this racist society.
This recent California law, extending overtime to agricultural workers, comes along 80 years later. It doesn’t remedy all the hours of overtime that were not paid for 80 years. And, just like a slap in the face, it won’t even be immediately effective. For the large farms, workers working more than 9½ hours a day or 55 hours a week will be entitled to time-and-a-half pay, but not for three more years. And not until six years from now, will farm workers reach the 40-hour-week threshold. So, the farm workers will be stiffed out of the overtime pay for many years to come.
With an average income of $18,000 a year, farm workers can barely pay for their rent and their survival. Many studies found that the California farm workers struggle to afford the very food they produce.
As for California agricultural business, it brings in more than 50 billion dollars a year. These businesses boast that they are feeding the world.
No, the wealth and the food are there, but in the clutches of the rich business owners.
Oct 3, 2016
The following is a speech delivered on September 25, 2016 by Mary Anne Hering, a candidate for the Michigan State Board of Education, put up by the Working Class Party. It came from the website workingclassfight.com. You can find more information on that website about the Working Class Party.
Sixty-nine people, including myself, did the work to put Working Class Party on the ballot in Michigan. In six months, from January to July, we got over 50,000 people to sign our petitions. It shows there are thousands of people who agree that working people need their own party.
While petitioning, we touched a pulse in the laboring population. Everywhere we went, people talked to us about their concerns, their problems, their anger. One of the huge issues, which was brought up with us time and time again, was education. The destruction of the public schools. So today, this is what I am going to talk about.
I am angry about how the public schools are being dismantled to give the money away to private interests. Especially in working class districts! Detroit has seen the worst of it, but it’s not just in Detroit—it’s happening in other school districts across the state and the country. Public schools get closed, then reopened as corporate-run charter schools. School budgets get cut; experienced teachers get pushed out, get fired—class sizes increase past 40, 50 students.
As a longtime teacher I’ve seen the results of these attacks. I see it at the community college level—many students coming to college ill-prepared for the classes they have enrolled in. Big differences between students, depending on what school districts they came from. Whole generations of working class children and young adults are being tossed on the educational scrapheap because the two big parties serving the capitalists won’t spend public money to really educate working class children. Those parties—Democrats and Republicans—use the money to bail out the banks and to cut taxes and give outright subsidies to the corporations and to billionaire real estate speculators. This is the choice made by people who run this capitalist society.
I could cite many examples, and perhaps some of them can come up in the discussion. But all you have to do is look at the 2016 State of Michigan Budget—because in a nutshell, it shows what the state does. It will pay out more to Michigan corporations in tax refunds than it gets from these corporations in taxes this year—99 million dollars more given to business than businesses pay in taxes to the state.
We say in our campaign: Take that money back from those corporate thieves! Use that money on the schools. A decent, high quality, excellent education should be the right of every child.
Democrats and Republicans pretend it’s difficult to solve the problems of the schools. NO! The answers for how to improve the schools are EASY—and known to every teacher: decrease class sizes—15 in elementary, 20 to 25 in secondary, max. Hire MORE teachers, as well as support staff, cafeteria workers, custodial workers, nurses, social workers, counselors. Pay them handsomely because every day they work with and are responsible for our children and grandchildren. Make sure each and every building is fit for human habitation—fix, repair, renovate, rebuild if necessary. Build MORE schools. Stock them with ALL the materials necessary for student learning, socialization, AND comfort throughout the day: textbooks, computers, art and music supplies, not to mention furniture, office supplies, and, yes, toilet paper.
Start with early childhood education, for every child! All children enter school already having experienced some kind of education from their families. The children whose parents received a very good education—those coming from money, in other words—they already start school with some formal education, more than those coming from families without money, who had been cheated of an education themselves. Children of privilege start school with a “head start” in other words.
When the Head Start program began, it was a real, broad, national program; it had noticeable positive effects on working class and poor children. Head Start should be enriched and expanded, for every single child. Start early and continue all the way through high school—and beyond.
Schools should NOT be about just the basics, teaching to the tests. They should educate and enrich the whole person, with all sorts of extracurricular activities—sports, music, art, theater, robotics, chess club, and on and on. And parents should not have to pay extra fees for their child’s participation! Ordinary people who DO PAY TAXES, should not have to be millaged to death, under threat that they are to blame for the condition of the schools.
And yes, free education should continue even beyond high school. The powers that be and politicians keep saying that young people need to get an education to get ahead in this society—and then they make it impossible for people to get one, at least not without being in debt for the rest of their lives! Just yesterday, I met two young people who just graduated from universities and got Social Work degrees. They are $120,000 in debt!
Why shouldn’t young working class people get a FREE college education? Why shouldn’t ALL education be free? Why shouldn’t every college be well-staffed, with full-time teachers, with good wages and benefits, with reasonable class loads?
We all know that the children of the wealthy have access to excellent, high quality education. They know it takes money. And for those wealthy who send their children to public schools, that’s why they make sure their schools get funding. Bloomfield Hills gets more money from the state than Detroit. Bloomfield Hills receives $12,004 in state funding per student, while Detroit receives $7,434 in state funding per pupil (from the Education Finance Records for 2015-2016).
The children at EVERY SCHOOL should get what Bloomfield Hills gets. All public school districts should be funded extremely well to give them the tools they need to educate their children well.
And in fact, districts starting with less should receive MORE funding from the state than wealthy districts, NOT LESS. If it can be done for the children of the wealthy,—if it can be considered normal, just and proper by those parents for their kids to have all that—why shouldn’t it be normal for the kids of the working class?
It should be easy to have a decent, excellent, high quality education for everyone. And public money could be spent to provide just that. What stands in the way is that the capitalists want that money for themselves.
The policy of the wealthy, the corporations and the banks—and the politicians, both Republican and Democrat, who represent them—is to drain money from the schools. It’s their policy and it’s what they do. They accumulate wealth at the cost of our lives, our children’s lives and futures. They solved their economic crisis for themselves by taking more from us. It’s time we reversed that equation.
Corporations in Detroit, in Dearborn and throughout the state should no longer get a free ride—no tax havens draining our community’s resources. Money accumulated in private accounts from years of profit should be used to provide jobs and incomes NOW.
But that money has to be taken out of the hands of the capitalists who use it for themselves only. Workers, acting together, collectively, can stop the money train going from agencies like the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to the capitalists.
Working people, acting together, can open up all these financial deals, many of which are carried out in secret. All of us, taken together, can find where the money is hidden, money for jobs and wages, money in the public treasury for good schools for our children, money for decent public services.
We can show that the money is there, but we will have to fight to take it.
So, having told you it’s going to take a fight, bigger than any we have ever seen, now I’m going to tell about why I am running as a candidate in an election for the State Board of Education; and why Gary Walkowicz and Sam Johnson are running for Congress, Gary in District 12, Sam in District 13.
You and I know that voting, by itself, doesn’t change things. Elections, like the rest of this political system, are held firmly under the control of the capitalist class. We see that the two big parties dominate. They’re twin parties, both serving the capitalists. But we intend to use this election to say things that no one else is saying:
“We say working people need to fix things. No one else will do it for us! Together we have the power to fix every problem we face—if we fight...
Our goal today must be to keep the bosses from dividing us. We are all part of one working class: black and white, immigrant and native-born, women and men, young and old. We need all our forces to stand together.”
We intend to use the elections to put forward a program based on what the working class needs, to let working people have something to vote for that they can really agree with.
Our situation won’t be changed with a vote—we know that, and we will go on saying it. But a vote for candidates who stand for a working class policy can help prepare for that fight. In fact, it is the only useful vote. When workers vote for the Democrats or Republicans, both of whom go on serving the capitalist class, that really means throwing their vote away.
Our campaign doesn’t have a lot of money—we don’t have any big contributors to our campaign. But WE have something much more important from the standpoint of the working class—a REAL policy in the interest of the working class. We know that a vote won’t bring that policy into existence. It will require a fight, a fight by working people, for us to begin defending ourselves, including in the matter of education for workers’ children. But everyone who votes for the Working Class Party can make a statement in this election—that there is a part of the working class today that understands the need for that fight.
We need your help. We need your vote. We need you to talk to family, friends, co-workers and neighbors. Get them to vote for the candidates of the Working Class Party. Make it your party.
Oct 3, 2016
Chicago teachers voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, 96% yes, with 90% of the teachers voting.
A strike vote is not a strike. It’s not even a clear statement that the teachers have really decided to strike, nor that the union leadership is ready to lead a strike. But it is a statement that the teachers are angry–and with very good reason.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his cronies point out that the Chicago Public Schools are broke. True enough. But then they have the nerve to blame the teachers for the schools’ problems!
No, as the teachers’ union points out, the school board is “Broke on Purpose.” Emanuel and his buddies are the ones who give tax deals to every big company that operates in Chicago, including corporations like United Airlines, Boeing, and MillerCoors. They are the ones that set up all kinds of “creative” financing deals that funnel the city’s tax money to big banks, especially but not only Bank of America. They are the ones who set up a slush fund controlled by the mayor that gets a big share of property tax money–money that should go to the schools and other services. These so-called “TIF” funds then wind up going back to real estate developers.
So yes, the schools are broke, because the people who run Chicago have stolen the money that they need, and given it to the billionaires.
The schools are already seeing the consequences. Chicago schools have faced three rounds of layoffs and budget cuts just this year. The school board is setting up schools to close by starving them of funds so badly that parents send their students anywhere else, leaving some neighborhood schools with very few students. They’ve cut Special Education to the bone, and tried to discourage parents from getting their children enrolled.
The school board claims teachers must give up concessions, to prevent further cuts. For years, the board has paid a part of the teachers’ pension payments, instead of giving the teachers raises. Now they say they want teachers to pay this part out of their checks–which would amount to a 7 percent pay cut, more than wiping out the so-called raises they are offering teachers. But it’s obvious from everything city officials have done that they do not want to take from the teachers, in order to give more to the schools. No, they want to take from the teachers to give more to the wealthy.
It’s up to the teachers to decide if they are ready to fight. And it’s up to parents and other workers in Chicago to decide if they will join in. A fight would not be easy. But it’s obvious that without a fight, the education for working class kids in Chicago and the standard of living of teachers will both continue to get worse.
Oct 3, 2016
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake struck Oklahoma on September 2 in the region where drilling for shale oil is most intense. If the damage was minor and no one was hurt, it was only because the earthquake happened in the middle of nowhere.
That makes the second 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Oklahoma in five years; the biggest two ever recorded in the state. And hundreds more earthquakes have been recorded–2,500 in 2015, alone, compared to only three in 2005. In Texas, earthquakes recently hit in regions that never had them before, like near the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
So what has caused all this recent earthquake activity? Many geologists say the earthquakes are tied to fracking, which has grown at the same pace as earthquakes occurred. Of course, the oil companies in Oklahoma and Texas deny there is a link, as do the much larger energy companies that feed off them.
Deny it they can, but the procedure itself obviously disturbs layers of the earth below the surface. Drilling deep into the earth for shale oil, in the process known as fracking, ejects thousands of gallons of extremely salty water along with the gas and oil, thus opening up the possibility of fractures in the lower strata of the earth. In order to get rid of this poisonous water, the companies then inject it back deep into the earth, under pressure, leading to a wide web of fractures. Seems like a recipe for some kind of problem.
Given that earthquakes have increased along with fracking, wouldn’t it be obvious to stop fracking until geologists can find out more about what’s happening?
Instead, fracking keeps growing. Why? Because finding oil and gas brings with it big profits. The oil industry, like all other industries in this capitalist society, is not in business to ensure that safety is built into employment and the environment where work takes place. No, they are in business to grab the largest profits they can, in the shortest possible time, let population safety–and the earth–be damned.
Oct 3, 2016
The list of people killed by the police seems to grow every day in this country. Disproportionately, those killed are black. From Ferguson to Charlotte to Tulsa to Baton Rouge to Chicago to New York to Baltimore to St. Paul to El Cajon, California to North Charleston. Keith Lamont Scott, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, the list goes on and on and on.
In so many of these cases, the cops have the same response, the same excuses, the same cover-up. They find witnesses–and they can always find witnesses afraid of the police–to say the person cops murdered was a threat. They dredge up something the person did in the past. Like the most disgusting lawyer defending a rapist, they find some way to blame the victim.
But the sheer numbers of people they kill–black, but also white, Latino, American Indian, and every other group–begs the question of why? Why do the police in this country kill so many more people than the police in other rich countries?
It is first of all because this massive state apparatus uses enormous amounts of violence to suppress the social problems capitalism has created. We live in a society of outrageous poverty and enormous wealth. To keep that system going, capitalism has tossed aside whole generations of people, with little education, no jobs–people just scraping to stay alive. And the politicians who run this system use the violence of the police to keep order, to make sure that people whom capitalism has thrown out stay in line.
But other rich countries are capitalist too. In France or England capitalism also throws out large numbers of people. It also creates wealth for a few people and poverty for others, even if the extremes are a little less extreme than they are here.
The difference is that this country was built from day one by black people who were enslaved, inside this country. The first African slaves arrived in Virginia to work the plantations before the Mayflower. France and England had slaves–but they kept slavery and the violence that went with it at a distance, in their colonies. And slavery in the U.S. meant violence, systematically aimed against the black population.
The violence did not end with slavery. It continued with the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, and Jim Crow in the south. And when black people moved to the northern cities, they faced white riots and bombings and systematic police violence to keep them in the ghettos.
Jim Crow and white riots against black people may be a thing of the past because black people found the ways to fight back and force the end of open segregation. But the systematic police violence continues.
And the violence of slavery and its aftermath, accompanied by genocide against the Native Americans, was never confined to the black or American Indian populations. It has always hit everyone who lives here, even if not in the same proportions.
The racist aspect of these killings, the litany of young black men cut down by the police out of all proportion to their numbers, hits you in the face. But behind this racism is the basic functioning of U.S. capitalist society, woven into the fabric of this country from the very beginning.
Oct 3, 2016
Upon his death at the age of 93, political leaders and media commentators praised Shimon Peres as an “advocate of peace” in the Middle East. After all, hadn’t Peres even received the Nobel Peace Prize for being one of the Israeli leaders who signed the 1992 Oslo Accords with Israel’s arch-enemy, the PLO?
But just as the Oslo agreement has not produced any peace in the quarter century since, Peres was no man of peace–not in any moment during his long career in Israeli politics.
As a young man, Peres was part of one of the Jewish nationalist organizations in Palestine that served as the foundation of the state of Israel. And Israel was founded on the principle of exclusion of the Arab population–which meant not only depriving Arab Israelis of full citizenship rights, but also the actual physical removal of Arab people from what was to become a “Jewish state.” Jewish gangs attacked Arab villages and carried out massacres, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to flee their ancestral land and become refugees.
Today, almost 70 years after its founding, Israel is still surrounded by refugee camps. And during all these years, the Israeli state has never abandoned its policy of attacking the Palestinian population. It’s above all this staunch Israeli policy, fully supported by Israel’s main sponsor, the U.S., that has made peace impossible in the Middle East.
For how can there be peace between Israel and the Palestinian people when, for example, Israel funds, gives military protection to, and even organizes the Jewish settlers who occupy Palestinian territory? Peres, as a cabinet minister, was one of the early architects of this aggressive plan to grab Palestinian land.
For decades, Peres always stood by, and himself actively implemented, Israel’s policy of aggression and expansion, including massacres. In 1996, for example, Peres was Prime Minister when Israeli warplanes bombed a U.N. camp at Qana, Lebanon, killing 106 Palestinian civilians, half of them children.
For decades, the U.S. has generously funded Israel’s military, effectively using it in its effort to control the Middle East. As part of Israel’s political elite, Shimon Peres thus served the interests of the U.S. ruling class in the Middle East for many decades.
That’s why big media in the U.S. call Shimon Peres today a “man of peace.” The “peace” he stood for was the “peace” of the Palestinian graveyard. He was every bit a man of war and aggression his whole life.