Lebanese Beauty Queen Stripped Of Crown Over Israel Visit

Image by facebook

By Daniel J. Solomon August 24, 2017

Lebanese bomb-shell Amanda Hanna is losing her beauty queen title after authorities in the country discovered that she visited Israel using a foreign passport.

“After communicating our decision with Lebanon’s Minister of Tourism, he decided that Hanna should be stripped of her title because her visit to Israel violates our country’s laws,” the group running the Miss Lebanon Emigrant contest told the Al-Modan newspaper in Lebanon.

Hanna, who holds dual citizenship in Lebanon and Sweden, had used her Swedish passport to travel to Israel last year for an academic trip. She later competed in the beauty content, specifically for Lebanese expatriates.

Lebanon, like many Arab countries, has a strict ban on travel to Israel, and has in the past sanctioned those who have violated the travel ban.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO