By Barney Breen-Portnoy - November 4, 2016
Originally appeared here in The Algemeiner
The world must learn how “unique and diverse” the Jewish state is, an Ethiopian-Israeli beauty queen told The Algemeiner on Friday, amid a week-long US college campus speaking tour.
“There are Americans who I meet who are surprised that I’m Jewish and that I was an officer in the IDF and won Miss Israel,” 25-year-old Yityish ‘Titi’ Aynaw said in an interview with The Algemeiner while in New York City. “It’s weird for them. They don’t understand my story. Everything good that I represent, they don’t realize that these are things that can happen in Israel.”
Aynaw — whose current US tour was organized by the Jewish National Fund and Media Watch International — was born in the Gondar region of Ethiopia. Left parentless at the age of 12, she and her brother soon moved to Israel to live with their grandparents in the Mediterranean coastal city of Netanya. After finishing high school, Aynaw enlisted in the IDF and served as an officer in the Military Police Corps. Read More