My Speech for a Model United Nations Meeting in Ireland
Talk for Ireland – Model United Nations - January 21, 2026
I first want to first express my thanks to Principal Stephen Gilbert, Katie Gueirin and the other organizers for inviting me to speak to you today. I also want to thank my friend, Professor José Horta, for putting Katie in touch with me. I send greetings from Portugal to the previous speakers Councillor Fergal Dennehy, Pat McKelvey and Jeniffer Cooney. I’m very honored to participate in your Model United Nations meeting. I’m sorry that I can’t be with you in person but health problems prevent me from traveling.
I intend to talk for half an hour, but if I go over that time limit by a minute or two, please forgive me.
Congratulations to all of you who are here as United Nations delegates. You have clearly decided that if our species is to survive ethnic conflicts, trade wars, endless onslaughts of fake news and climate change, and if we are ever to reduce the widening gap between the rich and poor, you and your generation will have to act decisively. And if you don’t mind an opinion that likely reveals my age, asking ChatGP for advice isn’t going to help you much. You’re going to have to interact with real people and use your knowledge of history and science, as well as your intelligence and sensitivity to bring about worthwhile change. And most of all, your empathy.
I suspect that quite a few of you decided to become delegates here because you are deeply concerned about the conflicts taking place across the globe, especially the one in Gaza that cost 70,000 Palestinian lives. I like to think that you are committed to helping the Palestinian people and everyone else who is struggling to survive.
Are you aware that according to a report in October from UNICEF – and I quote – “A staggering 64,000 children have reportedly been killed or maimed across the Gaza Strip, including at least 1,000 babies”? The same report states that UNICEF officials have no idea how many more additional children died while buried under the rubble of buildings destroyed by the Israeli bombardments.
And yet, despite all our concern for these victims, I would guess that no more than a handful of people here can name a single Palestinian killed in the war. I don’t say that to make you feel guilty, but only to point out that the dead and wounded are quickly reduced to mere statistics. Who they were is forgotten by everyone but their families and friends. Which is a topic I want to talk about a little later in relation to my books.
I also believe that you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t aware of that we live in a world in which hundreds of millions of people go hungry on a regular basis and have little or no access to clean water. And a world in which millions of others have no civil rights and become political prisoners if they dare to call for regime change. I hope that you will make room on your agenda for negotiating ways to improve their lot in life – strategies to help everyone from starving villagers in South Sudan to the tens of thousands of brave prostestors in Iran currently being arrested, imprisoned and murdered by a ruthless fundamentalist regime.
Before I talk more about the most pressing problems your generation will need to solve, I want tell you something that has little to do with the U.N. and more to do with you as individuals: In these difficult times, please continue to believe in yourself. It’s easy to lose hope when you see terrifying images of an anti-Semitic terrorist attack in Australia, or discover that friends of yours support neo-fascist leaders like Victor Orban and Nigel Farage, or learn that millions of girls are blocked from attending school in West Africa and Afghanistan. But the hopelessness into which you may sink will dissuade from trying to right those wrongs. So, over the next months and years, keep reminding yourself every day that you are young and beautiful and intelligent and full of energy.
Now, please take a moment to look around at your neighbors in the audience. I’m asking you to do that because I’m convinced that you and the young men and women you are looking at will make this world a kinder, fairer and more peaceful place if you remain courageous and persistent and constantly say YES YES YES to improving social and economic policies across the globe. So please keep saying YES.
And here’s a secret: by discovering how best you can contribute to the world, you will find out who you are. Which is another way of saying, you will discover what gives your life meaning.
Very often, I wish I could go back in time and give that encouraging advice to myself when I was in high school. I really needed it, since I was often filled with self-doubt and discouraged by the people around me. If I had listened to them and ceded to my misgivings, I’d never have become a writer. Or married my wonderful husband. Or left my comfortable life in California in 1990 to move to Portugal. In short, I’d have probably become a lonely and unfulfilled person.
I want to also give you a small warning, however: while trying to achieve your goals, you’re certain to have doors closed in your face – or to be treated rudely in other ways. My first novel was rejected by 24 American publishers over the course of two years. I fell into deep despair. But a crazy idea saved me. Why not show the manuscript – written in English – to a Portuguese publisher? Keep in mind that I’d moved from California to Portugal a few years earlier and that my novel was set in Lisbon in the 16th century. And that it explored a crime against humanity that had been purposely omitted from official Portuguese history books. Happily, the first publisher I sent it to loved it and had it translated into Portuguese. It became a Number 1 bestseller in 1996, which, for you, must seem like ancient history. The novel’s success made it possible for it to be published in the USA, Britain, Russia, Japan, Brazil and many other countries. Which started my career and changed my life. Among other things, through a long chain of circumstance, it made it possible for me to become friends with Professor José Horta and be here with you today. So I sometimes say that if you want to live out your dreams, you must learn how to ricochet – to bounce off the doors closed in your face and start off in a slightly different direction. So remember this: every rejection is giving you a hidden invitation to alter your pathway a little bit. And to take your crazy ideas seriously.
Prior to the abduction of Nicolas Maduro three weeks ago, I wanted start this part of my talk with a topic dear to my heart and an important part of various UN programs – the empowerment of women. But since early January, I feel I need to begin by saying that the geo-political situation on our planet is getting more dismal and dangerous every day. As you know, it has become far worse since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 and the ethnic cleansing carried out by Benjamin Netanyahu and his armed forces over the last two years. And it has become increasingly bizarre, menacing and unpredictable since Donald Trump entered the White House.
Nicolás Maduro was a wretched dictator who kept his country in misery, but kidnapping the head of a foreign state and murdering those who were protecting him violates international law and everything the United Nations stands for. And even goes against the American constitution. Does anyone here really believe that U.S. forces abducted Maduro so that Trump could foster the development of a flourishing democracy? How could anyone believe that when he is doing everything in his power to create a dictatorship in America? If the welfare of the Venezuelan people were of importance to him, he’d have already forced the acting President to set a date for free and fair elections. Instead, as I write, he has declared that America will now decide the future of Venezuela. Not only has he failed to insist on elections, but he has made no attempt to remove Maduro’s corrupt cronies from office. Instead, has obliged one of them – the acting President – to give American companies access to Venezuelan oil and cease commercial ties with China and Iran. And therein lies the main purpose for Maduro’s kidnapping.
Should you regard the militarisation and illegal profiteering that characterize Trump’s government as important? I hope so. Because America is still the most powerful country in the world, and its energy and trade policies and military incursions are sure to alter the quality of life in all your countries. Think of climate change, for instance. Trump and the billionaire boys club that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get him elected are going to keep investing all they can in oil and gas and will do next-to-nothing to promote alternative energy sources. That in itself is a policy of extreme importance in places like Central America and sub-Saharan Africa, where, over the next decades, millions of farmers and others will seek to immigrate to wealthier countries because of intolerable summer temperatures and extreme weather catastrophes such as droughts and floods.
Excuse me for talking so much about America, but the disastrous changes in my homeland often leave me so distraught at times that I simply cannot read any news stories about what is happening there. Why?
When I was a young man, I participated in a demonstrations against America’s war in Vietnam, protests that ultimately ended a nightmarish, 10-year conflict in which 2 million Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans were needlessly killed – and which devastated Vietnam’s tropical forests. I also witnessed how activists improved opportunities for women, African-Americans, LGBT people, immigrants and people with developmental disabilities such as autism. These reforms gave me confidence that the USA would always progress toward a fairer, kinder and more intelligent society — slowly but surely. And that most other countries would also keep improving.
Do you know the Bob Dylan song The Times They Are a Changing? Here are some of the optimistic lyrics:
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
I believed those lyrics. And for a while they proved to be accurate. The times did change. But now we are going backwards. Last year, 77 million Americans – almost half of all voters – once again put a compulsive liar and con artist back in first place – a racist bully who invents fake news to sell his arrogant brand of ultra-nationalism.
Want to hear something truly shocking and distressing? The financing that once went to our America’s recently destroyed Department of Education, with its programs for kids mired in poverty and children with special needs, will now be given in tax breaks to Jeff Bezos and other billionaires.
And so the gap between the rich and poor will keep getting wider and wider and wider…
And here’s a lesson for us all…
Do you know why polluters in America now consider themselves free to spread toxic waste throughout the country? Because the current occupant of the White House has drastically reduced the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency. That organization no longer has enough agents to monitor the country’s moutains, prairies, farmlands, rivers and coastlines. And so I think we all ought to remember that to ruin the environment in your countries at an accelerated rate – in Spain, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Australia and everywhere else – an unscrupulous president or prime minister doesn’t need to revoke laws and regulations, or pass new ones. (take out a pen). This is all he or she needs. A pen. A pen to start slashing the budgets designated for environmental protection!
The second-to-last thing I want to say about America is that it now has an extremely active secret immigration police force called ICE. Their heavily armed agents wear facemasks so that they can’t be identified. They arrest legal residents every day without cause. The majority of these victimized men and women have been living in the United States for decades. They aren’t mostly rapists and drug addicts, a lie that Trump and the Republican Party have spread to tens of millions of their followers on the social media. They are bakers, house painters, carpenters, taxi drivers and doctors. And students just like you. They pay 60% more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Nevertheless, masked thugs from ICE grab them without warning and handcuff them without giving them any explanation as to why they are being arrested and take them to prison. Hundreds of them are kept in a concentration camp called Alligator Alcatraz. After weeks of living in miserable conditions, they are often deported to countries where they have never lived and where they have no family members.
To capture them, Trump has sent thousands of ICE agents to Chicago, New York, Washington DC and other cities controlled by mayors who belong to the opposition – to the Democratic Party.
As I write this speech, news is coming in of a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis named Renee Good who was murdered by an ICE agent. Renee was an American citizen, the mother of three children, a singer and poet. Trump claimed that she was a crazy leftist terrorist endangering the life of ICE agents – trying to run them over. That was a total lie – an invention of his sick mind. Renee Good was guilty of no crime. No infraction. No insulting behavior. Her murder was fully sanctioned by Trump and the Republican Party and paid for with taxes that I and all Americans are forced to pay. Which makes me wonder if one day soon I’m going to have to give up my American citizenship in order to avoid having to pay the salaries of thugs who enjoy arresting and abusing law-abiding American citizens and residents.
Trump has allocated $170 billion dollars for immigration control and border enforcement. That’s is more than the defense budget combined of Great Britain and France. And more than the Gross National Product of 40 African nations. Now, what should that gigantic budget for ICE and other anti-immigration programs tell you? It should tell you that Trump is at war against tens of millions of people in his own country. At war against those born overseas. At war against residents of every city run by the Democratic Party. At war against anyone who disagrees with him.
I hope that his inhuman immigration policies will not spread to your countries, but given the contempt for refugees expressed by Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, André Ventura in Portugal and many other viciously prejudiced world leaders, I fear that they may soon be become standard in all of Europe.
And here’s what leads me to believe that it may take decades to return to humane social and political policies: Probably for the first time in history, millions of people are proud of their ignorance – of their contempt for science and history. For all knowledge.
This is a catastrophic change. And its spreading around the world to all the countries you represent. How? Tens of thousands of willfully ignorant people take special delight in spreading fake news and conspiracy theories on the social media. They use Artificial Intelligence to create sophisticated videos that look real but that are fabrications. When they go viral, they influence voters to despise trans people and refugees, for instance. And to believe that vaccines don’t work – that they’re a communist plot.
Do you know why neither you nor any of your teachers was ever crippled by polio? Or died of Scarlet Fever or Whooping Cough, diseases that killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century? Because all of you were given vaccines against these diseases as children. Tell me this… How are you U.N. delegates going to promote health care around the world when so many hundreds of millions of people read every day on their cell phones that vaccines and other medications don’t work?
And how is the U.N. going to fight against fake news and conspiracy theories? Now there’s a topic that’s sure to give you insomnia over the coming months and years!
Quite contrary to what all of you delegates would like to achieve, it’s now clear that Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and many other world leaders believe that Might Makes Right. Their foreign policies consist entirely of bullying other countries! Which means that they will never abide by any U.N. resolutions. Would you like a example of what contempt for the United Nations looks like? Israel has flouted more than 20 U.N. Security Council resolutions over the last decades. It continues to build settlements, for example, in the Occupied Territories. And nothing the U.N. can do will halt their construction.
So let’s not live on false hopes… Over the next few years, Trump, Putin and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, are going to divide up our planet to get as much resources, power, and wealth as they can. And in so doing, we are fast moving toward a future in which we will have a few thousand billionaires who control everything – not just governments, but also the media and schools and energy resources.
So, for the time being, I think that you may have to give up hoping halt to climate change or establish rational immigration policies or slow down the sale and proliferation of armaments. I’m not saying you shouldn’t work on these issues, but that it’s my opinion that all the U.N. resolutions in the world will do nothing to alter the policies of of the USA, Russia and China.
So I’d like ot suggest you work on one particular issue where you can still make a huge difference during the dark times ahead.
Education.
Why education?
I’ll give you two examples of why working to give everyone a quality education can bring back rational thinking and sensitivity and empathy. And give us back our moral compass.
The first is from the USA itself.
It we look at the states where Trump won the latest election, they all have very low education rates. In states like Arkansas, less than a quarter of young persons graduate from university or even get a solid high school education. In the states where voters chose the Democratic candidate, the levels of education are much higher. In Massachusetts, for example, more than half of the young people graduate from university.
The latest American Presidential election proved that people who are well educated tend to chose more moderate, intelligent and tolerant candidates and are far less likely to be fooled by con-men and profiteers. Simply put, studying history and science and philosophy and art and music and psychology works as a vaccine against con-artists like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.
And so, in my opinion, the U.N. needs to do everything in its power to guarantee a good education for everyone.
Another example: Europe. All the countries with the highest education rates – Sweden, Norway and Ireland, for example – have stable democracies, where civil rights are guaranteed for all citizens and residents. Is this an accident? No. Once again, voters with a university education tend to choose politicians who believe in democracy and fairness – and who support policies based on knowledge and science.
I’d like to also make a special appeal for you delegates to concentrate on the education of women. In many countries in Africa and the Middle East, girls are either prevented or discouraged from getting an education. They grow up having almost no choices in life because they cannot read or write. So let’s all work hard to make sure that they achieve full access to schooling and equal salaries over the coming decades. And are protected by law from all forms of domestic violence. I truly believe that this world will be vastly improved when women actively share in running it. And are protected from predators like Jeffrey Espstein.
Two last topics. The first I mentioned briefly early – that victims of war, persecution and discrimination quickly become mere statistics.
In addition, they are frequently excluded from the official histories of our country and popular culture. They vanish. I learned that while researching my first novel, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon. So I want to talk now about what that book taught me about what I wanted to do with my life.
Until the 1960s and 1970s, virtually all historical texts were written from the point of view of those who won the wars and elections. Almost all of them were conceived, in fact, to favor the political goals of dictators, presidents or prime ministers – of governments.
For instance, while I was growing up in New York, our schoolbooks characterized the colonization of America as necessary and heroic.
As kids, we never learned anything about the genocide of Native Americans.
In addition, we learned almost nothing about their culture, religion, music or history.
Native Americans simply vanished. Their stories about how they lived and what they desired and feared never had any chance to be told.
And so this becomes a moral issue. Do all living human beings have a right to exist? Because making someone invisible seems to me a crime against humanity.
This profound truth – about how people disappear from history – became an important part when I was researching The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon.
I had the idea for the book in 1989 at my parents’ house, when I discovered a gorgeous volume about Jewish Manuscript illumination.
It had the most amazing illustrations – some of mythological beings such as men and women with the heads of parrots.
When I discovered that Jewish artists had illustrated Old Testaments and other sacred books throughout diaspora, I decided to write a book about a manuscript illuminator living in Lisbon. The book would have to take place prior to the Inquisition set up by the Church in 1536 because after that it became a crime punishable by death to practice Judaism.
I’d already been to Portugal but knew nothing about daily life in the 16th century.
While doing my research, I discovered the Lisbon Massacre of 1506.
This was a pogrom – an anti-Semitic riot in which 2000 Jews forcibly converted to Christianity were murdered and burnt in two pyres in the city’s main square.
When I asked friends about the Massacre – lawyers, doctors, teachers, architects… None of them knew anything about it. “What Massacre? There was no massacre!” they kept telling me.
You see, this crime against humanity and almost all information about Portuguese Jews had vanished from the country’s history.
It so happens that I have a subversive personality.
The terrible events that others would prefer to shitewash or hide… That’s what I like to explore in my novels.
It gives me pleasure to focus on what the people with power want to forget.
My novel took me 1 year to Research
2 years to write.
It was rejected by 24 US publishers over 2 years, as I mentioned.
After 5 years, I had nothing to show for all my work and I became very depressed.
Curiously, the major problem in the USA was geographic.
Those who know the USA probably discovered that most Americans believe that the world begins in Maine and Florida and ends in Calfornia. The rest of the world is off their radar.
What saved me was the crazy idea of showing the book to a Portuguese publisher. Happily, she loved the novel and decided to have it translated.
“The Last Kabbalist” became a number 1 bestseller in Portugal. In part because of that, it has now been published in 23 languages.
But I don’t want to talk about the success of the book.
Like I said, I want to speak bout what it taught me.
That I love to write about people who have been systematically silenced.
And forgotten.
I like to write about the people who who lost wars and elections.
Who lost the fight for equality.
Who lost their right to tell their own stories – to write about their joys and difficultes, their traumas and triumphs.
Said another way, the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the world don’t need me. And they don’t need talented young people like you.
They have all the propagandists they could ever need writing history from their point of view.
You can be sure, for instance, that as we speak, dozens of Russian historians are writing bestselling books that describe Vladmir Putin as a heroic and visionary leader.
It’s the outsiders who need me.
And that’s why historical fiction is so very important!
I’d like to add that you don’t need to be a writer to become part of this project. And this is what I most want to tell you.
Everyone of you can participate, no matter what your dream – no matter what profession you choose.
Economists
Doctors
Artists
Photographers
Carpenters
Musicians
Lawyers
Psychologists
Teachers
Ecologists
Scientists
If you become a physician, for instance, it might mean working with a program like Doctors Without Borders and treating people in under-developed countries.
If you end up a carpenter, you could consider working for Habitat for Humanity to build housing for poor people in regions like West Africa and Southeast Asia.
If you get a degree in psychology, you could specialist in counseling women who’ve been abused.
No matter who you are, there is always something you can do for the people whose voices have been silenced.
It might mean giving up a big salary for a few years. Or living in a faraway place. But I’m pretty sure that the benefits you will get – the amazing experiences you will have will change you forever and make you a far richer and more understanding person.
Now, if that sort of life doesn’t seem an option for you, there happens to be a more personal way – a wonderfully effective way – to make the world a place where kindness and love and justice are valued.
Be the changes we need to make. Yes, serve as a role model.
Stand up for women and friends from minority groups against abusive behavior and comments. Treat everyone with respect. Don’t insult people just because they think differently from you or come from another country – not on Facebook or TikTok or anywhere else. Do not spread conspiracy theories or use A.I. to create fake, slanderous videos. Defend the environment – our oceans and forests and all our other ecosystems. Put solar panels on your house. Plant trees. Reduce your carbon footprint.
Now, one last, very brief subject I want to touch on. It's a topic that may make me sound foolish or naive. Fortunately, I'm old enough not to care if you think I'm a little scatterbrained or silly. And I've discovered something very important: that risking looking ridiculous almost always means I'm on the right track.
Whenever we come in contact a person who’s an adult, whether it’s at a cafe or a sporting event or simply in the street, we tend to forget that that other person has survived tremendous traumas. Even if they seem perfectly happy and well adjusted, they’ve probably lived through the death of their grandparents and maybe even one or more of their parents. Maybe they’ve had a life-threatening illness and spent weeks or months in the hospital. Or perhaps one of their kids has suffered with a mental or physical disability for years. Maybe they lost the best job they ever had because of economic cutbacks.
All of us suffer nearly unendurable disappointments and traumas. Maybe some of you delegates already have. If so, I’m sorry that you had to discover this truth so young.
So what I want to say is, we are all survivors. Everyone one of us has been crushed by life at one time or another. Or soon will be.
When you have a free moment today, please take a good look at your parents and teachers. And realize that they’ve suffered through enormous difficulties – problems they weren’t sure they’d overcome. And that maybe they’ve never told you about.
We tend to forget that we all suffer deeply from time to time. I know I don’t always remember that. In consequence, we’re often rude to people we don’t know and treat them disrespectfully. We minimize their needs. We make believe that they haven’t had their heart broken. But they have.
In the increasingly dangerous and hate-filled world we live in, I think it’s essential to try to remember that we are all survivors. And for each of us to gain the courage to continue into our future, we need the kindness and encouragement and understanding of other people. All the time. In fact, every day of our lives.
Thank you.