Did Trump Ask To Host The Miss Universe Pageant On Masada?

Masada, the ancient Israeli fortress overlooking the Dead Sea. Image by wikimedia

By Aiden Pink May 5, 2017

The White House announced on Thursday that President Trump would visit Israel later this month as part of his first foreign tour as president. Israel’s Channel 2 News went on to report that the White House’s travel team had asked if the president could give a speech at Masada, the ancient desert fortress where hundreds of Jewish rebels held out against Roman sieges for three years before committing mass suicide rather than submitting to slavery.

While Trump has never visited Israel before, he is apparently familiar with Masada and its history. Eran Sidis, the spokesman for Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein, tweeted on Thursday that during a meeting with Trump six years ago, the real estate tycoon discussed with Edelstein, then the Minister of Information and Diaspora Affairs, the possibility of holding his Miss Universe pageant on the mountain.

While the Masada complex is often used for concerts and Israeli Defense Forces induction ceremonies, and former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both toured the fortress while on official visits, no American president has ever made a formal speech there before.

The White House has not yet confirmed any specific locations in Israel that Trump will visit.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter at @aidenpink.

Aiden Pink is the Deputy News Editor for the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO