(Jerusalem) She thought she would die several times, hid for hours under the bodies and became a star in Israel. Yuval Raphael, survivor of the Hamas attack on October 7, will sing for her country at Eurovision.
Posted at 7:12 a.m.
Delphine MATTHIEUSSENT
Agence France-Presse
This 24-year-old survivor of the massacre at the Nova Music festival won the reality TV competition on Wednesday evening HaKokhav Ha (The next star), opening the doors to Eurovision 2025, in Basel, Switzerland, in May.
During the competition, the young woman, a simple amateur, sang among other things a ballad version of Dancing Queen of the group ABBA, dedicating it to “all the angels” murdered during the festival.
And it was with tears in her eyes that she commented on Thursday on public radio Kan the images of her performance.
It’s a moment when I say to myself: how lucky I am to be here. And at the same time, this song is about all these angels who don’t have the chance to be here, […] That’s why I want to represent us.”
Yuval Raphael
She now hopes to perform in English at the competition, on a text yet to be written, so that the whole world understands her message.
The “road of death”
Questioned on the Walla information site just after Yuval Raphael’s victory, one of the members of the jury was delighted with this “incredible Cinderella story, a young girl who arrives like that, without having followed any musical education”.
Another judge summed up the symbolism: “She survived the horror, rose from the rubble and did public diplomacy for us.”
In the early morning of October 7, fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, infiltrated from the Gaza Strip, attacked some 3,000 participants in this open-air festival, two kilometers away.
They hunted them for hours, killing at least 370 people, according to official Israeli data, and taking 44 hostages to Gaza.
-A rain of rockets preceded the intervention of the commandos, pushing festival-goers – including Yuval Raphael – to regroup in small shelters, rudimentary concrete structures built on the side of the road.
The young woman recounted in an interview with public radio Kan the eight hours spent in the shelter, under the bodies of slaughtered festival-goers.
“The shelter was on Route 232, which means that almost all the terrorist cells passed in front of our shelter, and each of them checked that we were really dead” by opening fire, she remembers.
The artery in question is today nicknamed the “road of death”: it winds between the kibbutzim attacked by Palestinian commandos.
A permanent psychologist
In testimony in April before the United Nations Human Rights Council, Yuval Raphael indicated that of more than 40 people crammed into the shelter, only 11 had emerged alive.
“The grenades always arrived after the shots. At one point, to hide, I rolled to the side, exposing my ear. […]. I stuck my finger in my ear so my hearing wouldn’t be affected,” she explained on Thursday.
“Music is so important to me that it accompanied me even in that moment. »
Israel’s participation in Eurovision 2024 in Malmö, Sweden, in the midst of the war against Hamas in Gaza triggered by the October 7 attack, was accompanied by pro-Palestinian demonstrations bringing together several thousand people.
The Israeli Eden Golan, whistled several times, came in fifth position for her song Hurricane.
Yuval Raphael assures that she feels strong enough to face possible manifestations of hostility.
“I don’t expect to come to a place where everyone will help me and love me […]. I know I will arrive in a hostile place,” she said, adding that she would have a team to support her, including a psychologist available around the clock.
“This whole year has helped me understand what I need to keep my spirits up, in a situation much more difficult than boos. »
