Singer Yuval Raphael, who survived the Hamas attack at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, has won Israel's annual selection competition to represent the country in the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest.
Raphael was one of several participants in the selection show called “Rising Stars” and received national acclaim for his performances of Abba's “Dancing Queen” and Sam Smith's “Writing on the Wall.” The Israeli songwriter will have until March to write original songs for her to perform at Eurovision in Basel, Switzerland, this May.
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual event in which the participating countries are not only from Europe, but also include outliers such as Australia and Israel, sending performers to sing original songs and a panel of experts, as well as the audience With the votes of, the winner. The event is considered to have significant prestige and star-making potential, as many past winners have gone on to enjoy worldwide career success.
Last year's Eurovision contest – held in Malmo, Sweden, a city with a significant Muslim population – was marred by months of protests against Israel's self-defense operation in response to the October 7 attack. The Swedish artist called for the expulsion of Israeli contestant Signor Eden Golan and his fellow contestants, whom the Signor contestants “disparaged.”bullied”, and otherwise expelled her at the event. Although the Israeli delegation complained of abuse, Golan still achieved an impressive fifth place result. Israel came They came second in the public vote to Croatia, beating the ultimate winner, Switzerland.
This year's winner, Rafael, arrived at the selection competition after more than a year of processing intense trauma following her survival in a Hamas attack. Hamas terrorists killed an estimated 1,200 people on October 7th. The majority of them were unarmed civilians, many at home, sleeping when the terrorists entered the residential community and the massacred people. At the Nova Music Festival, terrorists stormed the grounds and engaged in widespread atrocities, including torture, executions, and gang rape. Witnesses later recalled that the terrorists saw the gang-rape victims and executed them while raping them. A report released in February by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) described acts of torture and mutilation at the music festival.
Many of the rapes were committed in groups with the participation of violent terrorists. Rapes were often committed in front of an audience of partners, family, or friends in a manner intended to increase the pain and humiliation of everyone present. Hamas terrorists hunted young women and men who fled from the Nova festival and, according to testimonies, dragged them by the hair amidst screams. The action targeted women, girls and men. In most cases, the victims were killed after or even during the rape. […]
Many of the bodies of sex crime victims were found bound and shackled. The genitals of both women and men were brutally mutilated, and sometimes weapons were inserted. The terrorists didn't stop at filming. They also mutilated sexual organs and other body parts by cutting them with knives.
Rafael was one of more than 40 people who fled to a bomb shelter near the festival grounds and pretended to be dead until Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops rescued her. It was a person.
“Of the more than 40 people crammed inside the shelter, only 11 were alive. Rafael said he still had Rape pellets from the attack embedded in his head and legs.” he said. era of israel recall.
“I want to tell them the story of the country, the story of what I went through and what others went through,” Raphael said before her performance. “I want to tell the story, but not from a place of seeking pity. I want it to be from a place of strength in the face of this, and in the face of boos, I'm 100% I'm sure it will come from.”
Before seeking a place in the singing competition, Rafael represented victims of the October 7 attacks at a United Nations event in March.
“I'm not here today to make a political statement,” she told the notoriously anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council at the time. “I am here today to open my heart to you all on behalf of the 364 souls who were brutally murdered during the Nova Festival. On October 7th, I will be joining Nova Music 5 km from the Gaza border. I was with a friend at a festival.
“Trapped and afraid for my life, I witnessed unspeakable horrors. Friends and strangers alike were injured and killed before my eyes. When I fell on top, I realized that hiding under them was the only way I could survive the nightmare,” she said.
Some time ago, Yuval Rafael appeared on the floor of the United Nations Human Rights Council on behalf of the Jerusalem Institute for Justice. She survived the Nova Festival massacre by hiding in a bomb shelter. Hear her unimaginable story.
Posted byJerusalem Institute of JusticeThursday, January 23, 2025
The Eurovision song contest maintains strict “political” rules regarding the content of participating compositions, so Rafael will not be allowed to perform a song specifically about the October 7 massacre. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which administers the competition, has challenged Israeli 2024 contestant Eden Golan for explicitly referring to the lyrics, originally titled “October Rain”, as genocide. Forced her to change the lyrics of her songs.
The EBU is reportedly particularly aggressive about the “no politics” rule, which says “they were all good children and each was their own” – a reference to Hamas' child victims. It is said that he discovered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljyn09tupw4
“October Rain” was rewritten as “Hurricane”, maintaining only vague references to the tragedy.
