HAIFA, Israel -- "Let me speak, let me speak!" pleaded the new beauty queen, struggling to push through the welter of kisses and bouquets the night she was crowned to tell the world that she -- the first Arab Miss Israel -- was dedicated to coexistence.
A few bumpy weeks and a pile of hate mail later, Rana Raslan is no longer as voluble about Arabs and Jews getting along."Israel is a democracy," she said recently, taking a break from English lessons in the cramped apartment where she grew up. "Everyone has their opinion."
It was different on March 9, the day of the Miss Israel contest, when the slip in the envelope read "Rana Raslan."
"It does not matter if I am Jewish or Arab, I will represent Israel as best I can," said Raslan, 22, as the runners-up smothered her with kisses and flowers. "We must live here in coexistence."
Within hours, lips that had brushed her cheeks were whispering that the judges chose her because she is Arab -- claims that competition organizer Pnina Rosenblum dismissed.
"There will always be people who need to say something, anything," fumed Rosenblum, a cosmetics magnate who is heading a feminist slate in Israel's May 17 elections. "She won because she was beautiful and delicate and interesting -- not because she was an Arab."
The sniping didn't stop there. Some Arab politicians accused Israelis of using her as a cover for discrimination that keeps many among the Arab minority -- a sixth of Israel's population of 6 million -- living below the poverty line.
"This is a trivial equality," said Arab lawmaker Abdel Malek Dahamsheh. "I hope she tells the world she belongs to the weak sector that suffers from discrimination."
Overseas, Arab newspapers said Raslan was being used by the Israelis to divert attention from alleged Israeli crimes against Arabs. "You daughter of Raslan, you are nothing but a means to serve the aims of the sons of Zion," said the Paris-based Al-Watan Al-Arabi weekly.
Some in her community recoiled at the idea of a young Muslim woman stripping down for a swimsuit competition.
Raslan said just because she posed in a swimsuit didn't mean she had been stripped of her identity. "I am a proud Arab, and I'll never forget it," Raslan said.
Forgetting it would be difficult in Israel, where Arabs and Jews live in separate communities and ethnicity remains key in defining people.
In the days following her win, a succession of reporters launched interviews with the question, "Did you win because you're an Arab?"
Letters arrive each day urging her to renounce her crown in favor of a Jewish contestant.
"I tell them my victory is a fact," she said.
Outside her apartment in Haifa's working class Wadi Nisnas neighborhood, demonstrators shouted slogans marking Land Day -- a commemoration of deadly 1976 riots in the Arab community sparked by land expropriations.
"I'd rather not deal with that," Raslan said, glancing at the door.