When Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre, takes the stage to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest later this month, millions will be watching – in Israel and around the world.
Eurovision is the world’s most popular entertainment competition and the largest live music event, with hundreds of millions watching it.
If you grew up in a country that doesn’t pay attention to Eurovision and would like to watch it with a little context this year, both out of curiosity and to honor Raphael’s harrowing story of survival, read on.
This year’s Eurovision will open on May 13 in Basel, Switzerland, the home country of last year’s winner, Nemo, and will be broadcast in Israel live on Kan 11. Raphael will compete in the second semifinal on May 15, and if she succeeds, in the final on May 17.
This will be a particularly important year for Israel because it will mark the first time that an Oct. 7 survivor has represented the country in such a high-profile competition.
Raphael won the Next Star for Eurovision contest, which currently selects the Eurovision contestants. She will perform the song “New Day Will Rise,” which references the massacre and the efforts of survivors like her to try to find a way to move forward with their lives.
A video for the song has almost three million views on Eurovision’s official YouTube Channel. It shows the 24-year-old singer with a group of young people romping through sunny fields as she sings, “New day will rise/ Life will go on/ Everyone cries/ Don’t cry alone/ Darkness will fade/ All the pain will fade/ But we will stay/ Even if you say goodbye.”
The video depicts Raphael singing with the group who clown around outdoors, juggle, dance, play guitar, kiss, and have a picnic. It’s as if the survivors have gotten together to celebrate life and have fun, an illustration of the motto “We will dance again.”
At another point in the video, young people are seen running through fields, like the festival goers did to escape the terrorists; but as the video continues, they run to the beach at sunset. Wearing a white dress, Raphael stands on the beach and sings the line “New day will rise” one last time.
THE SONG, by Keren Peles, who also co-wrote last year’s Eurovision song entry, “Hurricane” – and who served on the panel of judges of the Next Star for Eurovision that chose Raphael – features lyrics in French and Hebrew in addition to English. Raphael spent part of her childhood in Switzerland and speaks French fluently. Tomer Biran arranged the song and supervised the musical production.
“Hurricane” was performed with great stage presence by Eden Golan last year. Initially, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which produces Eurovision, asked for a rewrite of last year’s Israeli song, originally titled “October Rain,” because it contained references to the massacre that were deemed too overtly political. It was eventually replaced by “Hurricane,” which contains softer lyrics but still seemed to refer to recent events.
Raphael has spoken about what she experienced on that dark day and has described in interviews and in documentaries how she was enjoying the Supernova music festival with her friends when sirens rang out announcing that Hamas had fired missiles. She hid in a bomb shelter near Kibbutz Be’eri with about 60 others fleeing the festival, which the terrorists attacked repeatedly with rifles and grenades. When the shooting started, the young woman standing next to her was killed.
“At that point, I was [in a shelter] on the phone with my dad, who told me to lie down and pretend I was dead. The terrorists entered and exited about 10 times while I was hiding under bodies. There were shots and grenades, and it was a nightmare Satan himself couldn’t have created. I’m the only one in my row in the shelter who survived – everyone else was murdered,” she told Ynet.
“I’ll say something that probably only those who survived Nova will understand: After you come out of such an event, you’re full of guilt feelings. You ask yourself many questions, and the central one is ‘Why was I saved and not them?’ After I made peace with that, I want to give my dreams a chance.”
Anyone who saw her accomplished performances on the Next Star show, in which contestants perform different kinds of songs for months, knows that while her dreams were big, her talent is equal to them. In one of her final songs in the Next Star competition, she sang ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” in a slow, ballad-like version, which she dedicated to “all the angels who left us at the Nova.”
In the documentary about her that Kan 11 aired, she said that she knew she was a good singer before the festival, but that her near-death experience helped her conquer her fear of performing in public. “I felt freed… that I had nothing to lose,” she said.
Piece of history
Representing Israel is a big responsibility. Eurovision has held an important place in Israel’s cultural landscape for more than 50 years, since it was one of the first international arenas where Israel excelled.
Begun in the wake of World War II to encourage peaceful competition among nations, Eurovision has blossomed into a glittery extravaganza, with hundreds of millions of people around the world watching it on television and voting for the winner.
Eurovision is known for its wild costumes and elaborate lighting effects. It has launched the careers of many performers, notably the Swedish superstar pop group ABBA, who won with “Waterloo.” Other big hits that won at Eurovision include “Ding-a-dong” by Teach-In and “Save Your Kisses for Me” by Brotherhood of Man.
Stars who were born with a Eurovision win or who became much bigger following their Eurovision appearances include Celine Dion, France Gall, and Lulu.
While at one time singers had to perform in their native languages, that restriction was lifted long ago, and the majority of contestants perform songs in English. This makes the competition more accessible to English speakers, but it has made the songs blander. Israeli contestants tend to sing songs mostly in English, with some lyrics in Hebrew and other languages, as Raphael is doing this year.
Israel began taking part in Eurovision in 1973, since it would not have been welcomed in a Middle Eastern regional song contest. But Israel is not the only country from outside Europe to compete; Australia also participates. Israel has tended to do well at Eurovision, winning four times and often finishing in the top 10.
Israel took home the top prize in 1978 and 1979 with wins for Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta for the song “A-Ba-Ni-Bi,” and Milk and Honey for “Hallelujah,” respectively. In 1998, Israel won again with Dana International’s “Diva.”
While for decades the top prize eluded Israel, Israelis continued to be devoted Eurovision fans. Finally, in 2018, Netta Barzilai became Israel’s fourth Eurovision winner with her rousing rendition of “Toy,” a self-empowerment anthem. The 2019 Eurovision competition was held in Tel Aviv.
Israel has often sent its top performers. Ilanit, a major Israeli star, was Israel’s first representative; and the second year Israel took part, it sent an early incarnation of the super group Kaveret, who performed under the name Poogy and sang their hit “Natati La Khayay” (“I Gave Her My Life”), wearing vests they bought in a Jaffa flea market and looking sweet and scruffy. They were sure they were going to win – until ABBA performed.
Another Israeli superstar, Ofra Haza, performed in the contest in 1983 and came in second with her moving song “Chai.”
In 2009, Israel sent Noa and Mira Awad, a Jew and a Christian Arab, to compete. The duo finished in 16th place with their song “There Must Be Another Way,” which celebrates coexistence.
In 2023, Noa Kirel came in third, performing “Unicorn.” Her video of the song has nearly 10 million YouTube views on the Eurovision channel. Now the Israeli representative is chosen through the Next Star contest, which tends to favor unknowns.
Determining the winner
The winner of Eurovision is determined by a complex system that combines juries from each country with audience votes. Voters from each country are forbidden to vote for their own representative. The votes from each country’s juries are announced by a celebrity representative who banters with the hosts. Eden Golan will announce Israel’s points this year. Each jury picks the top 10 songs. Its top song gets douze points, or 12 points, its next choice 10 points, and so on.
Israel tends to do much better with the audience voting than the government-selected juries. Last year, for example, Golan came in fifth overall, but “Hurricane” was second in the audience voting. While we may sometimes feel that the entire world is against Israel, Eurovision voting proves otherwise.
People watching around the world can now vote, and these RoW – rest of the world – votes are added into the total.
There’s a lot more to know about the voting rules if you want to take a deep dive into it. There are dozens of websites devoted to all things Eurovision, and I’m convinced that if people spent as much time and energy trying to cure cancer or solve climate change as they do dissecting Eurovision, the world would be a cooler, healthier place. If you want to read more about the rules, you can go to the official EBU website https://eurovision.tv/about/rules.
Many Eurovision fans bet money on the outcome, and bookmakers around the world currently rank Raphael fifth to win, out of 37 competitors. The heavy favorite to win this year is Sweden’s KAJ, with a song called “Bada Bada Bastu.” It’s important to remember that for every heartfelt ballad in Eurovision, there are two silly songs. Last year, Baby Lasagna’s “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” from Croatia was favored to win before the competition, and it ended up coming in second.
Fondness, belonging
The LGBTQ+ community has always had a special fondness for the contest, where performers with various sexual orientations were welcomed and celebrated even before they came out openly. Eurovision has been called “the gay World Cup.” Israel’s Dana International was the first openly transgender person to win. Following Dana’s win, many performers have been open about being part of the LGBTQ+ community, notably Conchita Wurst of Austria, aka The Bearded Woman, who won in 2014 with “Rise Like a Phoenix.”
Israeli film director Eytan Fox made a movie to celebrate his love for Eurovision. The 2013 film Cupcakes is a comedy about a group of friends, one of them a gay man and one a lesbian, who write a song that wins Israel’s contest. They go on to compete in Eurovision in Paris. While it’s clearly about Eurovision, the EBU didn’t consent to the use of its name, so the competition in Cupcakes is called Universong.
Fox spoke in an interview about how, as the son of American immigrants, he began to feel a sense of belonging in Israel when he and his mother joined in the communal experience of watching Eurovision with their neighbors every year, which instilled in him a lifelong love of the song contest. In 2000, he was chosen to direct the Eurovision segment for the band PingPong, which brought its song “Sameach” (“Happy”) to the Eurovision contest in Stockholm. The group created controversy by waving a Syrian flag during the performance, since political displays are banned.
Cupcakes is not the only fictional depiction of Eurovision. The Israeli television series Douze Points is a comic thriller about a gay Muslim contestant and how ISIS tries to infiltrate the competition the year it was held in Israel, and the Mossad’s efforts to block them. Susanne Bier’s Once in a Lifetime is a Swedish film about a housewife who writes a song that makes it into Eurovision.
Most recently, the Netflix movie Eurovision Song Contest: The Fire Saga was released in 2020, the year Eurovision was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams star in the story of an unlikely duo who represent Iceland in the contest. Netta Barzilai, Israel’s 2018 winner, had a cameo, along with several other Eurovision winners. This movie was likely the first time many Americans heard of the contest.
BDS call
Despite the fondness of Eurovision voters for Israeli acts, there have long been calls for Israel to be banned from the worldwide competition, which have grown especially loud since the war broke out in Gaza. Last year, an Icelandic music organization and a petition signed by 1,400 Finnish music industry professionals called for Israel to be banned, just as the EBU had previously banned Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine.
The 2024 Israeli competition was held in Malmo, Sweden, a city with one of the highest rates of antisemitic incidents in Europe. Swedish artists also called to ban Israel; many people protested outside the Eurovision venue.
This year, those calls to ban Israel by various artists and organizations have intensified. Iceland’s foreign minister joined many artists and a Spanish broadcaster in calling for a boycott of Israel.
Artists who ignore the BDS movement’s call to boycott all events that include Israelis also face condemnation. Ncuti Gatwa of Doctor Who came under fire when it was announced last week that he would be this year’s official spokesperson for the United Kingdom, which means he will deliver the scores from the UK’s jury. Gatwa will also star in a Eurovision-themed episode of the popular, long-running TV series. Following these announcements, some social media users threatened to boycott the series.
To its credit, the EBU has consistently responded with different versions of the following message, which was issued by the union’s director general Martin Green this year: “Eurovision is a competition between public broadcasters, not between nations, and it must not be used as a springboard for political sanctions. This fundamental distinction makes it easy to understand the guideline adopted by the EBU in the face of various political pressures.”
One interesting way that Israel’s participation in Eurovision has intersected with domestic Israeli politics is that the EBU only allows countries with public broadcasters to take part in the contest. Recently, when some Likud politicians have spoken about shutting down Kan, Israel’s government broadcast authority, the fact that this would disqualify Israel from Eurovision likely saved it from the chopping block.
THE THREATS made against Eden Golan and the Israeli delegation last year were so intense and so credible that Shin Bet head Ronen Bar traveled to Malmo to supervise the security arrangements personally. It was revealed following the competition that Golan moved around the city in disguise, wearing blonde wigs and sunglasses.
She was booed at rehearsals and in her performances in the semifinals and the final in an attempt to rattle her, but Golan performed with preternatural calm in the face of circumstances that would have hobbled far more experienced performers.
“I didn’t hear the boos,” she said in a press conference following the semifinal. “I was completely focused. I felt no apprehension and no fear.”
This year, Raphael rehearsed to the sound of boos so she would be prepared. But she has said repeatedly in interviews that after having faced down Hamas terrorists, she isn’t worried about Europeans making some noise.
“There will be booing… there’s nothing I can do about it,” she told Ynet. “I’m still coming with the same agenda. And you know what? More than that, I think this is the kind of situation that will open my heart even more.”
On Monday morning, Raphael met with President Isaac Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog before departing for Switzerland. The president told her, “We are all with you. You have a wonderful personality, your story is incredible, and every time I hear the song, my heart swells with pride. We want so much for you to succeed.
“When you step on that stage, remember that you will be in the hearts of every Israeli home, of the entire Jewish people in the Diaspora, and especially in the hearts of the pure and grieving families of the Nova tragedy, of that horrific massacre,” Herzog said. “We are immensely proud of you and wish you the best of luck in this mission.”
Raphael replied, “On the one hand, I’m arriving and working as someone who wants to win and is doing everything with that goal; but on the other hand, I can’t help but feel that just being there is already a victory: that I have the privilege to do this.”
Jesus Christ is King
