Israel’s Christian-Arab Transgender Beauty Queen Opens Up: ‘I’m Lucky to Be an Israeli’
July 19, 2024 in News by RBN Staff
Thanks to Leila for these comments and story suggestion.
Like Amal Clooney (a Human Rights lawyer) this he/she kept quiet and a low profile on Gaza.
Instead she went to the French Riviera and to the Cannes Film Festival. Gotta promote the “peace” between your soul and your body that Israel gives to freaks.– L.P.
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Talleen Abu Hanna represents hope for transgender women in Israel
The 29-year-old is one of the protagonists in Yolande Zauberman’s documentary ‘La Belle de Gaza.’ Presented in a special screening at Cannes before its theatrical release on May 29, the film examines the often tragic destinies of transgender women in Israel.
“Talleen Abu Hanna preferred to flee the war, if only for 24 hours. At the end of April in Paris, far from the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas, the 29-year-old transgender woman, wearing a blue silk top and meticulous make-up, tried to forget the dead, the risk of regional conflagration and her “tug of war” over the national unity demanded by Israel, as she was born into a Palestinian Christian family from Nazareth, in northern Israel.After six months of military operations, Hanna seemed afraid to take a stand at a time when Israel’s LGBTQ+ community was being blacklisted abroad by part of the pro-Palestinian movement, which accused it of tacitly endorsing the war being waged by the Israeli state. Beside her, Israela Lev, 63, a veteran fighter for LGBTQ+ rights who presents herself as both Hanna’s manager and her “mother” (a protective figure in queer culture), sighed with sadness when asked about the conflict: “Rather than take a gun in our hands to go to war, we’d rather do our nails, put on make-up, inject Botox.” Or go to the Cannes Film Festival.
In May, Hanna and Lev will go to the French Riviera to present the documentary La Belle de Gaza (The Belle from Gaza), directed by Yolande Zauberman (Would You Have Sex with an Arab? in 2011 and M, winner of the César for Best Documentary Film in 2020). It will be shown in a special screening on May 22, ahead of its theatrical release on May 29. Shot before the war, the film interweaves the sometimes tragic fates of a number of different transgender women in Israel, many of them sex workers gathered on the same grim Tel Aviv street.”
ADDITIONAL STORY:
Source: Haaretz
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: Jun 17, 2017
Talleen Abu Hana, who won Miss Trans Israel beauty pageant in 2016, began her journey as an Arab Christian boy growing up in Nazareth
The Israeli Embassy in Washington marked LGBT Pride Month with a reception for Jewish and Israeli activists and leaders.
- Transcending Beauty
- Israel’s U.S. Envoy at Pride Event: ‘Hatred Toward LGBT Community Threatens All of Us’
- Israel Holds Its First Transgender Beauty Contest
About 100 people attended the event, which featured an address by Talleen Abu Hana, an Arab Christian from Nazareth who won the first Miss Trans Israel beauty pageant in 2016.
The embassy also paid tribute to the 49 victims of last year’s massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida.
“Just as the noxious fumes of anti-Semitism ultimately poison all of society, so too hatred towards the LGBT community threatens all of us,” Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said in brief remarks.
He also asserted that Israel is the sole country in the Middle East with the “values that progressives are supposed to champion,” referring to Israel’s legal and popular support for gay rights.
Abu Hana spoke about her experience as a transgender woman in Israel. After winning the beauty pageant, she was runner-up at the Miss Trans Star International Pageant and a contestant on Israel’s “Big Brother.”
As a boy growing up in Nazareth, Abu Hana grappled with an intense internal conflict between “body and soul,” she said. When she showed an interest in women’s clothes and makeup, her father lashed out at her.
“Transforming from the most beloved child to the one everyone hated I was lost and started thinking of killing myself,” she said.
Abu Hana moved to Tel Aviv, where the LGBT community is known to be strong and accepting. One evening while hanging out with new friends, a transgender woman was talking about her transition.
“I didn’t get what she was talking about,” Abu Hana recalled.
Another male friend said, “She’s transgender, just like you.”
Abu Hana was taken aback and insisted she was not. The male friend then took her face in his hands and said, “You are going to be a woman and a beautiful one.”
In an interview before the Pride event, Talleen emphasized the importance of moving to Tel Aviv, where the support she found as a Christian and an Arab facilitated her transition.
Israel’s universal health service covers the costs of sex-reassignment surgery.
“The law is on your side,” Talleen said, referring to the ease of changing one’s gender and name on government-issued documents.
After winning Miss Trans in 2016, Abu Hana quickly rose to fame in Israel, where she is often mobbed by fans eager to take a selfie. In addition to modeling, she speaks to transgender youth at shelters in Tel Aviv and most recently at Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ community center in Washington. She said she is humbled to be “an ambassador for peace between one’s soul [and] one’s body.”
Abu Hana now lives with her boyfriend, who she met before her transition on a night of dancing at a Tel Aviv club.
“I’m lucky to be an Israeli,” she said. “Being an Israeli means being truly free.”
