FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
To Contact ICWP, send an email to: icwp@anonymousspeech.com

Twenty-five thousand teachers in the West Bank (Palestine) went on a month-long strike for a survival wage and against a threatened increase in class size.  As protests escalated, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), promised concessions.  But when the official union moved to end the strike, many strikers rejected the union. 
The teachers currently earn on average about $6oo a month while the basic cost of living is comparable to that of Europe. Most, to survive, work second jobs, as waiters, cabdrivers and the like. Even finding a second job is not easy with unemployment at 25% overall (35% for women, 50% for youth).
Life for teachers will be very different in communism. For a start, they won’t be wage slaves. Food, housing, transportation, education, health care and so on will be collectivized and provided free. Maybe not a lot at first, but everybody’s needs will be considered equally.
Palestinian teachers also won’t have the PA on their backs.  The PA acts like another layer of oppression under that of Israel and the US. It says it represents the interests of all Palestinians but it tried very hard to squash the strike. It sent ‘security’ forces to stop teachers from marching and rallying. They arrested more than 20 teachers and even went after public figures who support the strikers.
The PA is dominated by members of Fatah. Fatah is supposedly a ‘national liberation’ movement but has degenerated into a corrupt, parasitic mafia. This is a common pattern for nationalist movements worldwide.
The ICWP does not support programs for ‘national liberation.’ We believe that workers should unite with other workers, not with their “own” bosses. The teachers’ strike once again exposes Palestinian ‘liberation’ as wage slavery, poverty, unemployment, and police repression.
Work for teachers will also be very different under communism, because we will replace capitalist education with communist education.
This means first of all an end to segregation. We will not have some schools with Palestinian students only, learning Palestinian culture and history; some schools with Israeli Jewish students only, learning Israeli and Jewish culture and history; schools with Bedouin students only … and so on. If classrooms remain segregated like this it really doesn’t matter what teachers say in them. In this case the medium is the message.
Capitalist education is based on many different forms of segregation / compartmentalization and we will smash them all. Students will not be divided by age and gender and the curriculum will not be chopped up into isolated subjects.
The biggest wall to knock down is that between learning and doing, between studying and working. Communist education will thoroughly mix them. Most of our learning will be done while doing useful work surrounded by workers from all over. This vision of communist education is really worth striking and struggling for.
Nations themselves are the ultimate form of compartmentalization. We won’t liberate nations, we’ll dissolve them. This means of course knocking down all the border fences and walls that seem to be going up everywhere. But we must do more than that.
Learning many languages and experiencing different cultures will be a vital part of young peoples’ communist education. Students will be strongly encouraged to travel to different areas to work and study and settle down if they wish. The working class will become international everywhere and racism, sectarianism (like the Sunni-Shia conflict) and xenophobia will be wiped out.
Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Iran and Iraq all had mass communist parties fifty years ago.  Sadly, they set themselves up for destruction by forming alliances with nationalist bosses who then smashed them.  Capitalism, nationalism and imperialism in the Mideast have created a hell on earth that only communism can end. 
Only the ICWP can make this all come true and only if workers join in great numbers. That means you!

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