Israeli Arab ballerina takes crown in Israel's first transgender beauty pageant

An Israeli Arab from Nazareth won the country's first transgender beauty pageant on Friday, in an event that brought together contestants from the Holy Land's three main faiths on Friday in an unconventional show of tolerance and coexistence.

Christian ballerina Ta'alin Abu Hanna, Miss Trans Israel 2016, will be Israel's representative at the Miss Trans Star International pageant in Barcelona in September.

In what organizers described as an ethnic "mosaic", those vying for the Miss Trans Israel 2016 crown also included a Jewish confectioner from an Orthodox Jerusalem family and a Muslim belly-dancer from Tel Aviv.




"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."

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/1.721880?v=4EDAE3231FBB9E069B9CB6213079ABF8

(With thanks to 6chars for finding this story)