海角大神

In a 48-hour trip to Israel next week, President Obama will tick off the usual diplomatic visit boxes: meeting diplomats and visiting the country鈥檚 historic sites.

And then he will have dinner with a beauty queen.

Obama鈥檚 staff personally invited the newly crowned Miss Israel, Yityish Aynaw 鈥� who is the first black Israeli to the hold the title 鈥� to a dinner at the home of President Shimon Peres next Thursday, a symbolic nod, perhaps, to the country鈥檚 120,000 Ethiopian Jews, a community that has long faced聽discrimination聽in Israel.

Ms. Aynaw, who was crowned last month and will represent Israel at this year鈥檚 Miss Earth pageant, has already dazzled the Israeli press with the narrative of her hardscrabble childhood and rags-to-riches rise to beauty-queen stardom 鈥� and is now making the rounds in international outlets as well.

"Ten years ago I was walking around barefoot in Ethiopia,鈥� she聽told Israeli news site Ynet News聽yesterday. 鈥淚 never imagined that one day I would be in the land of Israel, meeting the Israeli president and the president of the United States. I could never have imagined such a powerful and exciting situation."

Born near the town of Gondar in northwestern Ethiopia, Aynaw was an orphan by age 10, and immigrated to Israel two years later to live with her grandparents. By the time she was 19, she鈥檇 become fluent in Hebrew, won a national student film competition, and was training to be a military police commander in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Aynaw eventually led a cadre of guards, whom she trained to fire guns, man security checkpoints, and find bombs, according to聽a profile in Tablet, a US-based Jewish magazine.

Aynaw has offered other hints of her politics as well. She聽told an Israeli news station聽that she hoped to ask President Obama to release Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who is currently serving out a life sentence for spying on the US for Israel.

And when a reporter told her that American beauty queens often tout their hopes for 鈥渨orld peace,鈥� she shot back, 鈥渢o say a sentence like that, in my opinion, is to sound retarded.鈥�

鈥淚ran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon, China is trying to become a superpower,鈥� she continued. 鈥淭o say that I want world peace, of course I want it. It鈥檚 a dream. But I don鈥檛 think it will happen now.鈥�

Ethiopian Jews have a checkered history in Israel. A series of dramatic airlifts in the 1980s and 1990s by the Israeli government brought thousands to the Jewish state, but they, their children, and subsequent waves of African immigrants have faced a hostile 鈥� and at times overtly racist 鈥� reception.

Today, the average income of an Ethiopian Israeli is聽half that of Israelis at large, and more than half of employers surveyed in 2010 said they would prefer not to hire an Ethiopian. In January, the Israeli state copped to giving a number of Ethiopian women in Israel long-term birth control shots without their consent.

Aynaw has walked into that fray with diplomatic beauty-queen aplomb.

"It's important that a member of the Ethiopian community win the competition for the first time,鈥� she told a judging panel during the Miss Israel competition. 鈥淭here are many different communities of many different colors in Israel, and it's important to show that to the world."

As the Tablet profile notes, however, Aynaw is not the first politically charged pick for Miss Israel. Israeli beauty pageants, he writes, have long been a powerful lens for understanding the image Israel wants to project to the world.

Now, Israeli diplomats seem intent on building similar goodwill with Aynaw. Leo Vinovezky, Israel's deputy ambassador to Ethiopia,聽told an Israeli newspaper聽last week that 鈥渢his is the Ethiopian Jewry's finest hour."聽

Aynaw will have her own shot at diplomacy of sorts when she competes in the Miss Earth pageant later this year: The competition will take place in Indonesia, a country with which Israel has no formal diplomatic ties.聽