A Ton of Fun at the MUN

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. I haven’t had much free time on my hands so far and I don’t have much now either. An interesting incident will have to do for now. More elaborate posts at leisure.

Now these MUNs are pretty interesting events to attend or participate in. The link is fairly descriptive. Go through it if you have no idea what it is.

It should suffice to say that a fair bit of research is involved in preparing for a MUN. You do not want to be in situations like the one I’m about to describe:

I was at a MUN at some college. A friend of mine was assigned the country Israel. Now the agendas (topics to be discussed) of most MUNs are usually predecided. In the MUNs I’ve attended so far, it has been customary for delegates to begin with speeches that state the position of the country they represent on the topic at hand. Questions or comments by other delegates often follow the speech.

The topic for this MUN was essentially the Middle-East peace crisis. My friend delivers a pretty good speech on his country’s position. The floor is open to questions. The delegate of Lebanon stands up and asks him, somewhat sternly I might add, “What is your stand on the Sheba farms dispute?”

He looks at the Lebanon guy quizzically for a moment. It’s clear that he was taken off guard. Everybody’s waiting for what he has to say.

He tries to take the safe route: “We are neutral on that issue.”

Big mistake. At this point the Lebanon guy looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm: “You’re neutral on that issue?!! Your country has occupied out land… blah… blah… blah!!!!”

Mr Israel attempts a come-back at this point: He replies, with a very straight face, [sic] “Well, it’s not ours, but it’s not yours either naa.”

Needless to say, that golden statement just made everybody’s day.

In his defense, I must say that he was assigned his country on the day of the event and had earlier been given a different country. Circumstances did not permit him enough time to prepare. All things considered, I think his comeback was pretty good actually.