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A survivor of the Nova music festival massacre will represent Israel in the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest.
Yuval Raphael secured the position on Wednesday when she won “Rising Star,” the Israeli TV show that produces each year’s Eurovision entrant through a combination of professional judges and public voting.
Abraham beat out three other finalists, including the Christian Arab Valerie Hamaty and Daniel Wais, whose father was murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, and his mother abducted and later killed in Gaza.
Her win was propelled in part by her soulful rendition of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” whose lyric “You can dance” echoes the Nova survivors’ movement’s mantra “We will dance again.”
Now, Raphael will perform in Basel, Switzerland, in May in an international competition that last year drew fierce protest over Israel’s participation because of the Israel-Hamas war. Israel’s song for the competition — which last year had to be reworked after the competition’s organizers deemed the lyrics overly political — will be selected this spring.
The competition falls a year after Raphael testified in front of the United National Human Rights Council about her experience on Oct. 7, when Hamas launched the war with its attack on Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people, about a third of them at the Nova festival. She described piling into a bomb shelter with dozens of other festival-goers as terrorists assaulted them.
“When the bodies of those murdered fell on us, I understood that hiding under them was the only way I could survive this nightmare,” she testified. Of the 51 people in the shelter, she said, 40 were killed that day. She added, “The physical injuries I sustained that day are healing, but the mental scars will stay with me forever.”
Raphael, 24, launched her singing career after the attack and has participated in music workshops for festival survivors. She said before her performance on the singing competition that she wanted to bring her story to Basel.
“I want to tell them the story of the country, of what I went through, of what others went through,” she said on air. “I want to tell the story, but not from a place of seeking pity. I want it to be from a place of standing strong in the face of this, and in the face of the boos I’m 100% sure will come from the crowd.”
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