Eurovision 2025 –
Nova festival survivor to represent Israel
Yuva Raphael won the HaKokhav Haba competition which gives him the right to represent his country at the competition in Basel next May.
Published today at 10:42 a.m.
Yuva Raphael survived the Hamas attack during the Nova music festival. She will represent Israel at Eurovision.
Eurovision/Tal Givoni
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A survivor of the Palestinian movement Hamas’ attack on the Nova music festival, who hid under a pile of bodies in a shelter for hours on October 7, 2023, will represent Israel at Eurovision.
Yuval Raphael, 24, won the reality TV competition HaKokhav Haba (“The Next Star”) on Wednesday evening, giving him the right to represent his country at Eurovision 2025, in Basel, next May.
During the competition, the young woman sang, among other things, a ballad version of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”, dedicating it to “all the angels” murdered during the festival.
At least 370 people were killed
In the early morning of October 7, fighters from the Islamist movement Hamas attacked some 3,000 participants in the Nova open-air music festival, gathered two kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
-They hunted them for hours, killing at least 370 people, according to official Israeli data, and taking 44 hostages to Gaza.
According to Yuval Raphael’s account in testimony before the United Nations Human Rights Council in April 2024, when the rocket fire began, prior to the commando attack, she took refuge with others festival-goers in an anti-missile shelter.
Hidden under the bodies
But successive groups of Hamas gunmen opened fire inside the shelter, a small, crude concrete structure built on the side of the road. “I have witnessed unspeakable horrors. Friends and strangers were injured and killed before my eyes,” she said.
“When the bodies of the murdered people fell on us, I understood that hiding under them was the only way to survive this nightmare.”
“Out of more than 40 people crammed into the shelter, only 11 ultimately came out alive,” she added.
Israel’s participation in Eurovision 2024 in Malmö, Sweden, in the midst of the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the October 7 attack, was accompanied by protest demonstrations bringing together several thousand people. .
The Israeli Eden Golan, whistled several times, came in fifth position for her song “Hurricane”.
AFP
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