Profile of an Israeli Diplomat...

The Jerusalem Post has a nice profile of Mehereta Baruch, Israe's first Ethiopian-born diplomat.

Zevadia, whose father immigrated in 1987 and moved to Beersheba because that was where Abraham the Patriarch dwelt, answered a newspaper advertisement, passed a rigorous battery of tests, and entered the ministry's cadet course in 1993. Her first job was to be part of the team sent to augment Israel's delegation at the United Nations' celebratory 50th General Assembly gathering in New York.

Sitting at a desk behind a little sign that read "Israel," numerous African diplomats - including some from Ethiopia - stopped to query, Zevadia recalls.

"They looked and saw a woman who doesn't look typically European and asked me questions. It was an honor for me, and an honor for the state," she recalls.

Many people - including African diplomats - were ignorant of the fact that Israel had taken in immigrants from Ethiopia, she says.

"They would ask me questions like, 'What do you have to do with Israel?'"

After serving four months at the UN, she served for six years as the consul for academic, culture and minority relations at the Israeli consulate in Chicago.

It was while serving there that she realized the extent to which her personal story could disarm critics of Israel.

She remembers taking part in a debate at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee with a pro-Palestinian professor soon after the outbreak of violence in 2001, and surprising the audience - which included some harshly anti-Israel students - by her very presence.

Although she says the evening was "very difficult," she believes that having a black woman representing Israel immediately changed the picture some had of the country.

"They were surprised and didn't expect it."

Israel, Zevadia says, "was built by immigrants from around the world and we need to show this, not that many people abroad are aware of this."