Israel has selected an October 7 survivor, who hid from Hamas in a bomb shelter for eight hours, to represent the country at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest.
Yuval Raphael, 24, was chosen to compete at May’s contest in Basel, Switzerland, after she won the final of the Israeli talent show Rising Star, which took place this week in the Israeli village of Neve Ilan.
She won the competition after performing a rendition of Abba’s “Dancing Queen”, dedicating it to “all the angels” who were killed at the festival. Her official Eurovision song will be selected internally by a committee.
Raphael, from the Israeli city of Ra’anana, survived Hamas’s attack on the Nova Music Festival on 7 October 2023, which killed 360 partygoers and took 40 more hostage. She says she survived by hiding under dead bodies inside a bomb shelter for eight hours
The singer has been sharing her story while competing on the talent show, and said she still has shrapnel in her head and leg from the festival attack.
She said after winning the show: “I can’t explain how excited and ready I am! Thank you for giving me this huge honour and trusting me to represent my country on the grand Eurovision stage in Switzerland.”
Raphael will follow in the footsteps of last year’s contestant Eden Golan, who represented Israel at the contest in Malmö, Sweden, and placed fifth, despite protesters boycotting the competition over Israel’s involvement amid its war in Gaza. Golan was continuously booed throughout her rehearsals and performances, and was reportedly confined to her hotel room when she wasn’t performing.
Golan had her song “Hurricane” reworked from a previous track called “October Rain”, which was thought to be a reference to the Hamas attacks on Israel, and was scrutinised by the European Broadcasting Union.
Along with the title’s reference to “October”, this included the lines, “There’s no air left to breathe” and, “They were all good children, each one of them.”
After the European Broadcasting Union said it was scrutinising the lyrics, Israeli president Isaac Herzog called for “necessary adjustments” in order to ensure the country could take part. The song was updated and Golan was permitted to proceed in the contest with “Hurricane”, with the EBU approving the new lyrics.
Non-European countries such as Israel are allowed to take part in Eurovision if they become a member of the EBU, the organiser behind the event. Israel, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Australia are all allowed to compete due to being EBU members.
Last year, the EBU defended its decision to permit Israel to take part and rejected comparisons to Russia, which was banned from participating in 2022 due to consistent breaches of membership obligations and a violation of “public service media values”.
After the 7 October attacks that left around 1,200 dead, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government embarked on a devastating 15-month-long bombing and ground campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel’s Eurovision decision has been announced as Israel and Hamas uphold a fragile ceasefire deal, which will usher in a six-week period of calm.
The first phase of the ceasefire includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from central Gaza and the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza. Hamas will release 33 Israeli hostages, and the first three hostages released from Gaza arrived in Israel on Sunday (19 January).
