MINISTER MIDPOINT

The question before us now is whether the appointment of Pnina Tamano-Shata as Aliyah and Integration minister signifies the end... or the beginning (“From desert exodus...” May 29).

There will be those who will breathe a sigh of relief and view her appointment as a reparation of sorts for the bigotry and prejudice that the Ethiopian community has been subjected to over the last three decades. Now that a member of that community has “made it,” concerns over racism are no longer a worry, and suspicions about their Jewishness, health and cultural ambiguities will be forgotten. A relatively small payoff for a clean conscience.

Others, on the other hand, will see Tamano-Shata as a token appointment, nothing more than a placeholder until the need for a more politically expedient replacement. The newly appointed minister will now have to prove that her credentials are valid and that her promotion from backbencher to a seat in the cabinet is justified. In this scenario, her organization, communication and analytical skills will be closely scrutinized, and she will have to demonstrate that this important position was earned by her intelligence and abilities and not via affirmative action policies.

The answer, I suspect, will be somewhere in the middle. Ambivalent feelings toward the Ethiopian community will not magically go away and there will remain, unfortunately, more than a few towns and cities in Israel where members of this community will be regarded as outsiders. And for those lurking behind the other side of the coin (like me, for example), that the appointee is someone who truly understands the aliyah experience is more than a step in the right direction; it represents one of the few logical appointments that have come out of this unity government. BARRY NEWMAN

Ginot Shomron