Young people in this room are about to inherit a dangerous, potentially chaotic world.

Most of you are Americans, citizens of the most advanced, privileged country.

And those privileges, coupled with your interest in world affairs and the United Nations, bring with them new and extraordinary responsibilities.

Thank you sincerely for this invitation to speak with you this evening as you begin what I am sure will be a tremendously educational experience at this unique University of Chicago Model United Nations.

Thank you, especially as I know my name is not Mary Robinson, Ramsey Clark, or Ralph Nader, and that few of you may have heard my name before this evening.

Indeed, in past years, people working for or with the U.N. in one way or another have usually spoken to this forum. ATheyhave traditionally focused on the U.N. system itself, human rights issues, and matters not very controversial; some might even say “safe.”

But in many ways, including “psy” logically, the world of the roaring 90s — which is all most of you have directly experienced in your own lives until lately – also crashed on 11 Sept. And I expect other crashes of various kinds ahead of us all – political, economic, and military.

There are natural and severe reasons our world is in such turmoil and danger today.

There are natural and severe reasons there are”suicide bombers” in that great city” which represents the thehcityocal poi-represent our religious faiths – Jerusalem, a marvelous and unique city where I have spent much time.

There are natural and severe reasons young people your age in other places are choosing to become what Americans call”terrorists” and what they” s call”m” ” ty”s” an” “freedom fighters.”” “A “d th “re “a “e r “al reasons, “natural “grievances, genuinely found strut angles, which lie behind 911. not in a new war at all. Instead, we are in a new phase of an ongoing battle in which millions of people in faraway countries have already been killed, in many cases, by policies and forces and allies of our own country.

And so, it is with these responsibilities and this new situation in mind that I have chosen to diverge from” the” safe” subjects and deal with this issue that will be crucial for your country’s future and our country’s future.

This evening, I want to talk with you about not general human rights but specific political and economic rights, not about the successes of the United Nations but its failures and the significant challenges it now faces.

Most of all, I want to speak with you about the subject I know best and first-hand from over 150 visits to the Middle East region and 30 years of conferences and relationships since I was a student like you – about” the “Middle East Peace P” process” a “d why “it had exploded in”an org” of even greater violence and despair than when it began.

Most of the human rights problems in our world have profound political, economic, and territorial roots. Fundamental issues of power and wealth are involved at the national and international levels. How we structure our society, who is really in control, and why are the genuinely crucial issues that too often not honestly discussed.

The most challenging and fundamental issue of all is that the world’s resources are ownconworld’sworld’s distributed because what determines crucial things like how people are fed and hed and housed, how people receive, and in most cases, do not receive, health, lth care, how people are able, or unable, to provide for themselves and their families and their futures.

Sadly, unlike us, who are so privileged, most humans in the 21st century are in miserable and desperate circumstances.

In the wake of World War II, the victorious powers created the United Nations, just as they had created the League ofter after the previous “War To End Al” ars,” the white “shed “World War I. “he U.”. quickly became a world forum that, had to be n one way or anther. Still, it did not have to evolve as today’s U.N. has not lived today’s dream of ofounders’nders’ promises of all; it has not fulfilled its primary responsibility to achieve independence, credibility, and assertiveness on behalf of all of the people on Planet Earth, rather than on behalf of those most powerful and wealthy.

· There have been far too many central Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that have gone unheeded, unenforced, and, in many cases, unremembered.

· The significant powers, especially the United States, have manipulated and cowered the U.N. far more than should have been allowed or tolerated.

· There is a terrible misdistribution of wealth on our planet, leaving the majority of human beings in poverty and despair – the U.N. should by now have far more seriously addressed this major dilemma in far more assertive and potent ways.

· There is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe looming. Projections from U.N. bodies warn that in the lifetime of most in this room, our planet could experience unprecedented ecological change, including as much as a 10-degree temperature rise, leading to calamity on a tremendous scale.

· The international arms race is terribly out of control, propelled, in fact, by the very powers in charge of the U.N. through the Security Council – a global military-industrial complex is fueling future warfare and potential Armageddon.

· And even if these terrible weapons of mass destruction are controlled and never actually used, kind is squandering the best of its talent and wealth, building ever new generations of ever more frightful weapons rather than schools and hospitals and food for all.

· Nor has the U.N. and its many agencies adequately prepared to fight international disease and starvation seriously – two plaques now ravaging the African continent and threatening much of humanity.

By now, you may have realized I have not included any jokes or one-liners to enliven my talk with you this evening. Frankly, the situation we are all in is too dangerous and tragic for jokes or for pointing fingers at individual political personalities.

We urgently need to focus our most excellent attention on the significant political and economic issues and institutions and find ways to restructure and manage them for the common good. That was the original UNations’tions’ vision and dream. You are challenged to discuss, debate, and learn each other about that for the next three tense days.

We need to focus on revitalizing the United Nations, which is in a difficult predicament, desperately needing to find a way to be independent and potent. Though it is an organization of member states, it is urgently vital to become a far more democratic forum, and thus a far more respected forum, representing the peoples of our world, not just their often corrupt and self-serving, repressive, and deceptive governments.

The world’s only superpower has been controlling, manipulating, and badgering. And it doesn’t get its way far today; just a few months after 911, the US was nearly totally isolated at the important U.N. gathering in Durban, South Africa – bUSeri, ng, and bullying everyone nearly about everything relating to history, racism, and fundamental economic and political rights.

And since 911, theUS. Has it again vetoed a Security Council resolution rightly seeking to provide some position for the Palestinian people, whom it declared way back in 1947 should have a state of their own immediately?

Indeed, let me turn directly to the most controversial issues, the one the U.N. itself midwife and the one the U.N. has spent more time, energy, and anguish dealing with than any other.

Of course, I am referring to the situation in what many still”call “The Holy”Land,” the area that” was “Palestine until 1947, the area now called Israel, and” the “occupied territory.”

It is”this “very region whi”h als” has given birth to modern”-day “ter” or”, to airplane hija”kings” su”cide “bombings, truck bombs, and political kidnapping. And today, because of the past wrongs for which the United Nations and the United States are considerably responsible, it is now more fractured and divided and blood-soaked than it has been since Biblical days and then the period of the Crusades.

But that was a world of swords and crucifixions. Ours is a world of nuclear and biological bombs.

Your schedule of sessions and debates at this Model United Nations has this situation in the Middle East more prominent than any other. And rightly so.

Many of you may find what I will now outline troubling. Many of you, young Americans, will wonder how what he is saying can be true given what is usually told about these issues in the popular mass media in our country.

Indeed, I still remember when I was in graduate school how upset and disbelieving I was when Professor Richard Falk at Princeton first used such concepts”s as “r”c”sm,” “war c”imes,” and “APA”t” ” d” wh” n “disc” using” e  Ara”-I”Israeli “conflict.

Then, I was a student like you are today. Then, I had not yet had a chance to travel the world, meet many new people, hear many new views, and ponder these significant issues.

Now, more than 25 years later, when I have personally been so lucky to have had such opportunities, I have to try to squeeze these 25 years into less than 25 minutes – now half gone already!

All I can realistically do in the next few moments is share my conclusions and encourage you to reach your conclusions. And, in just a few minutes, when I have finished, I encourage you to start with the most complex and vital questions you can come up with to ask of me.

Today, the situation in the Middle East is worse than when I represented the International Student Movement for the United Nations at U.N. Headquarters for three years”. The “Middle East Peace “process” has made it worse precisely. “nd the” primary reason is that all fundamental, rather than an actual peace process, it has been. It is a domination, subjugation, and repression process…and we have all been taken for a ride!

Let me try to explain in the following way: If you had invited any of the subsequent much more distinguished speakers, most of whom I am fortunate to have as personal friends, here is what they would have told you about the realities “of the “East’  East’ Peace ‘process’:

If yinEast’inEast’ ProNOA’or NOA’ CH”MSKY: “The agreements incorporate  “he ext “emist version of U.S.-Israeli rejectionism…and are closest to the Sharon Plan of the early 1980s… [They] should be compared to the institution of that monstrous system of Apartheid in former South Africa…(upon the Palestinian “people).”

If you had invited Profess”r EDWA,” ” SAID: “There is a wan,t on the murder of  “language “e evidenlanguage’ language peace process’… At a time when phrases le are suffering and shabby leaders reaping Nobel Prizes that only enable more exploitation, it is crucial to bear witness to the truth… Far from bringing peace [the agreement] will bring greater suffering for Pamore tremendous and an assured threat to the Israeli people…. Every leader involved with the Oslo peace process – Palestinian, Israeli, American, or European – has acted without principles and without anything remotely resembling vision and truthfulness. Worse, large droves of intellectuals, scholars, and experts have betrayed their vocations, to say nothing of their expertise and knowledge. This betrayal has contributed to the amazingly compliant attitude of the American media in particular, who have celebrated, extolled, saluted, and rejoiced, where there has been neither occasion nor cause to justify such excessive handclapping and ju” elatiojoyyou had invited DR. E”AD SARRA” – Dr. Sarraj, a distinguished Palestinian, who has his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard by the way, made these remarks at a Georgetown Universit” forum:

“We are not against the rules” of law”; in fact, we want the rule of law. We want fairness and equality before the law. We want to feel that the people have rights and are dignified after so many years of brutality, repression, and humiliation at the hands of the Israelis. The people here are longing for this- dignity, pride…

Dr. Sarraj wrote a critical essay” titled “Why We Have All Become Sui” ide “om” e rs” five years ago now. It has been widely “published throughout the world, except in the US; in it, Dr. Sarra,” writes: “The struggle of Palestine “and today “how not to be a bonus, and the amazing thing is not the occurrence of the suicide bomber being, but rather the rare”y of them.”

If you had invited ROB”RT FISK – “he Western correspondent longest in the Middle East region, writing for The Independent in London for the past quarter century: He made these remarks in an interview with me also five years ago now, long before recent events proved “im right:

“I put ‘peace process’ in the” quotation” marks ‘when I write about it in my newspaper; it is an American expression, not a Middle Eastern expression… All one can say about the Peace Pss’ now is that it is dead. It is finished; the most remarkable thing I find in coming to the States is the degree to which people do not realize that. I have to live the reality of the Middle East, and I have not met anyone in the past two to three months, including those who initially, wrongly in my view, believed it would work, who do not think now that it is dead an” finished.”

If you had invited HAI “AR ABDUL-S “AFI – a most distinguished secular Palestinian who was Chairman of the Palestinian Delegation at the Madrid Conference and all subsequent international negotiations until Oslo – and by the way, he refused to attend the White House ceremony in 1993 predicting what w”s to come:

“How do we view the act”  of resistance” ce by Hamas and resistance? Palestinians are entitled to resort to all sorts of measures, including legitimate armed struggle, to try to rid themselves of occupation. The Israeli position, which is based on Israeli military power and with heedlessness toward legality, legitimacy, and United Nations resolutions, is a cause for violence… Israel, in recent times, killed so many Palestinians in cold blood, Palestinians that it apprehended and could have arrested, but it preferred to kill them… The world will realize it is not a peace process; it”is hopeless…”

Suppose you had invited P “OFESSOR CHAR “ES BLACK – a’s of Americ a’s most respecteAmerica’ss of America’s Law and International Law, who taught his entire career at Yale University Law School. And yes, here too, no one would publish these views in the USA; for the first time in his life, Professor Black could not find a publisher for his essay about the U.S., Israel, and the “Palestinians:

“They are imprisoned “under obscene “conditions after kangaroo trials, or no trials at all. They are regularly shot at; enough of them are killed to make death ever-present… Many are maimed; many are disfigured for life. Yet they come out in the streets, again and again, these young people… What name shall we give to the trait of character that produces conduct like that? Why do you hesitate? You know what the word is. Do you hesitate because that word never happens to be spoken in America in application to these young Palestinian people? Or is it because you fear that a revolution in your thoughts and feelings will have to follow your pronunciation of your’re? Well, you’re very likely right about that.That makes you nervous? So let me help you. I’ll start things they’ll-saying they’ll foI’llu the far I’ll do i’ The wo'” is ‘courage'”

And finally, though I could go on and on in this vein, had you invited ARUNDHATI ROIndia’sner of India’s most prestigpIndia’sandry pIndia’sand again published worldwide, except in the US. Here she is writing about the World Trade Tower/Pent” going to attacks:

“Could it be that”this that led” to the attacks has its USproot not in American freedom and democracy, government’s government’s record of commitment governments exactly things – to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry, and unimaginable genocide (out”i”e America)?”

“Now Bush and Bin L “d” n have even “b” gunother’sow each other’s rhetoric. thither’s to oothersas ‘head of the snake.’ Both invoke God and use the linvokeillenarian currents, excellent and evil, as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed – one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The vital thing to keep critical is that neither is an acceptable alternative” “to the other.”

“With all due respect “t” to Presiden,” “uus the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the government—all the beauty of civilizationsation – our art, our music literature- is beyond these two fundamental ideological poles. This is an ere Uansisttle chance that the people of the woman world will be middle-class consumers as they will all embrace any particular religion. The issue is not about good v. evil or Islam v. Christianity as much as about space. It accommodates diversity and contains the impulse towards hegemony ­ every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious” and cultural.”

Please let me conc”ude with a sta” telling poem that tells the seeds of possible salvation rather than a future cataclysm.

If yIsrael’snvited Israel’s well-known and respected Israeli playwright and television host, DAN ALMAGOR, he might have recited this poem to you. He wrote it during the first Intifada after visiting the Palestinian city of Nablus for the first time. Before writing it, he went back a second time to make sure, accompanied by his close friend, then the Defense Minister of Israel, none other than General Yitzhak Rabin, with whom he parted ways.

And this poem is not just about Israelis andit’sestinians; it’s abouit’sally noit’sEt’sally noit’sE SHOOTDON’TDREN TOO, DON’T WE

Most otrulyDON’Trele trulyDON’Tre
To harvest trustees
As they have for hundreds of years.
Most of these people genuinely desire
To raise their kids
Not to throw stones
Or Molotov cocktails;
But to study in peace
To Play in peace

And raise a flag.
A flag.
Their flag.
And facing that flag to cry,
As we did that night, then, excited as we were.
And we have no, have no, have no
Right in the world
To rob them of this desire,
This flag, These tears,
These tears, which always, always
Come after all the others.

Let us start preparing our defense.
We will need it soon enough;
Those who did it.
And those who still do.
And those who hushed it up
And those who still do.
And those who said nothing
And those who clucked their “tongue, saying
“Something must be done”e, really;
(Bu” not tonight, I have a concert.
A gala event.
A birtwe’ll)
Indeed, we’ll all get our sFwe’lleoColonel’se’lle ColonelColonels’.triColonel’somingiColonel’soming.’Their Colonels’ come, it must be so.

The trials of the generals, the colonels,
And the division, the battalion,
And the platoon commanders.
There is no escaping it.
This is how history works.
What shall we say then?
What will the colonels, the captains, and the corporals say?
What will they say –
Of those terrible beatings, The Brutality.
Of houses blown up.
And most of all, the humiliation, That humiliation.

Of patients forced to wipe off the writing on the walls.
Of older men forced to take down a flag
From an electric pole
Who got electrocuted or fell
And broke their legs.
Of the old water carrier
Whom soldiers ordered off his donkey
And role on his back, just for fun.

We turned a deaf ear.
We turned a deaf heart.
Mean, arrogant, and dumb.
Who do we think we are
To be so deaf, so dumped?
Ignoring the obvious: They are human
As we are, as we are.
At least as we used to be.
Only forty-one years ago.
No less diligent, no less smart
As sensitive, as full of hope.
They love their wives and children.
As we do, no less.

And our children now shoot theirs.
With lead, plastic bullets, and gas.
The Palestinian state will come to pass; it will.
Not a poet wrote this. History will.
And seasons will come, and seasons will go
And life goes on, as we very well know.
Weddings and birth and death are all the same.
But just the shame of it. The shame.

Thank you again so much for inviting me and politely listening to me. Now it is your turn.