This article is one of the winning submissions from the New York Post Scholars Contest, presented by Command Education.
Growing up in a diverse place like New York City has afforded me opportunities to immerse myself in other cultures, hear different languages and see different faces on every street corner. My love for learning about others was guided by my ability to experience so many different perspectives throughout my life. This has fueled my interest in international relations and has inspired me to be an active member of my public high school’s Model United Nations (MUN) club.
MUN has become one of the most sought after extracurriculars since our club attended the National High School Model United Nations (NHSMUN) conference last year and won the First Place Distinction Award for Research and Preparedness. Embarking on my second year in MUN with a leadership position as treasurer, I am inspired to work with my peers, both in the club and globally, to envision a world built upon the founding principles of the United Nations—to maintain international peace and security and to promote human rights for all.
However, as this year’s NHSMUN conference nears, I struggle with how to make the most out of the experience while also acknowledging the unwavering sense of pain and distress the U.N. has caused my fellow Jewish people. The October 7th attack on Israel proved to be a critical turning point for Jews, both in the U.S. and abroad. Its aftermath has made life as Jewish teenager in New York City challenging and emotional in ways I’ve never experienced before. I am now anxious about discussions that may come up surrounding the current Israel-Palestinian conflict or about Jewish people given the rising levels of antisemitism and sense of fear and intimidation Jews have begun to feel throughout our day-to-day lives. I struggle to make sense of the fact that in 2023, Israel was reprimanded by the U.N. General Assembly in 14 resolutions, while in the same period, there were only seven resolutions against all the other countries of the world combined. How could this be? Somehow Israel deserves to be called out by the U.N. far more than Iran? Russia? North Korea? Countries where oppression and violence exist on an unimaginable scale. There is no logic to explain this other than to confront a painful truth: the U.N. has animosity for Jews and holds Israel to a different standard than it does other countries.
If this was not distressing enough, amidst the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7th, there are now credible allegations that members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the agency charged with providing relief and support for Palestinian refugees, took part in the terror attack. This shocking revelation has exposed a truly dark side of the U.N. and has served to undermine UNRWA’s ability to aid Palestinians at the moment when they need it most. Though I still plan to attend this year’s conference, I do so with a conflicted heart and ask myself: How can I advocate for peace, justice and safety when the very institutions tasked with upholding these ideals failed to do so for Jews? For MUN participants like me, noticing these failures casts doubt around the very principles and values that are discussed during MUN conferences. However, despite these revelations, I am pushing past the disappointment and pressing ahead with a mission I believe in, attempting to be the change I want to see happen.
Considering my own doubt, I wonder how my peers are feeling as NHSMUN approaches, or if they think about it, or even know anything about the current situation. In talking with the President of my school’s MUN, he shared with me the following: “Despite my position in Model U.N., I am rarely one to defend the U.N. That being said, as both the President and a proud Jew, I not only support [our school’s] attendance at NHSMUN, but also continued aid for UNRWA, and applaud the actions of Ireland and Spain surrounding the agency’s funding. Their position in assisting the Palestinian people is unique, especially after the ICJ’s finding of plausible genocide in the Gaza Strip.”
This point of view differs from my own regarding UNRWA, but rather than reject it, I will engage with it. The importance of MUN is to understand how countries, with representatives of differing viewpoints, attempt to make decisions they believe will benefit their people. While this is easier said than done, my difference of opinion with the President of my school’s MUN club demonstrates how members of the U.N. encounter vastly different viewpoints on complex topics and there are bound to be disagreements. I hope that as members of MUN representing the next generation, we are all guided by a pureness of intent in seeking peaceful resolutions, even if it means disagreeing on how we get there. I refuse to allow myself to feel cynical even in light of the realization that the U.N.’s actions towards Israel clearly show that the U.N. has lost sight of its founding principles.
Despite my apprehension, my sense of purpose in attending NHSMUN is altered in a more positive way. I look forward to meeting new people and learning from the experience. I am confident that many of the people that I meet during the conference will go on to be part of the next generation of leaders, policymakers and advocates for change and improvement. My peers and I have a responsibility to foster empathy, conversation and effective collaboration to address the root causes of conflict and support human rights for all. In doing so, I hope they will prioritize the safety and stability of all who call the Holy Land home and approach the issue without obvious bias.
In spite of my internal conflict, I am attending NHSMUN with an open mind, with the hopes of promoting constructive dialogue. The alternative is simply not an option. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously wrote in “Stride Toward Freedom”: “[Violence] leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by destroying itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.” I just cannot accept a post-war reality in which the bitterness from Gaza’s survivors ends in further hatred for Israel or where brutality from Hamas and the I.D.F. continue to run rampant. My heart might be conflicted, but my hope and conviction remain. Acknowledging this, I feel strongly that my fellow MUN participants and I have an obligation to learn from past and current U.N. failures in order to demonstrate the kind of leadership the world desperately needs.
An 11th-grader at the Institute for Collaborative Education in Manhattan, Leitner hopes to work in communications in the film or music industry.
