Israel’s transgender beauty pageant a multi-religious draw

In what organisers described as an ethnic “mosaic”, the 12 vying for the Miss Trans Israel 2016 crown included a Jewish confectioner from an Orthodox Jerusalem family, a Muslim belly-dancer from Tel Aviv and a Christian ballerina from Nazareth. 

The Christian, Taleen Abu Hanna, won and will represent Israel at the Miss Trans Star International pageant in Barcelona in September, a role she will evidently relish. “Our country deserves to come out on top,” Abu Hanna, 21, told journalists. “Our country allowed me, a Christian Arab from Nazareth, to end the war between my soul and my body. So if it made peace for me, our country is only a country of peace.” 

Unlike elsewhere in the Middle East, Israel has mostly liberal laws on sexual identity, with openly gay and transgender troops in its conscript military. But people who are homosexual or transgender often face hostility from religious conservatives in the Jewish majority and Muslim and Christian Arab minorities. 

“Among us there are judges, there are doctors, there are lawyers, there are people who are working in hi-tech positions and, as well, people who would like to go to the Israeli parliament and to represent us in our parliament,” said pageant judge Efrat Tilma at Habima National Theater.