When 24-year-old Yuval Raphael took center stage Saturday night at the Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland, she stood there not only as a gifted singer and dynamic performer, but also as a symbol of Israel’s astonishing resilience.
Just 589 days earlier, Raphael wasn’t basking in the limelight – she was hiding under a pile of dead bodies in a roadside bomb shelter that turned into a death trap for dozens who fled there from the Supernova music festival on October 7. Of some 50 people in the shelter, she was one of only 11 who came out alive.
An experience like that could easily have shattered Raphael’s soul and extinguished her spirit. But she didn’t let it. Instead, she continued to chase her dream of becoming a singer. Earlier this year, she won the HaKoakh HaBa televised song contest, earning the right to represent Israel in the Eurovision contest.
And on Saturday night, she represented the country with grace, dignity, pride, and indomitable spirit. At the end of her song, aptly titled “New Day Will Rise,” she thanked the crowd. Then she shouted out three words that encapsulated both her own strength and the spirit of the nation she so fittingly represented: “Am Yisrael Chai” – the People of Israel live.
Shivers traveled down the spines of millions of her compatriots.
Raphael is the living embodiment of those words. On October 7, her barbaric tormentors left her for dead. But she wasn’t. She survived. Not only did she survive, but she also embraced life with passion. She didn’t wallow in victimhood but performed, created, and carried on with tremendous energy, fervor, and excitement.
That is what she brought to the stage in Basel.
And she was rewarded with a second-place finish overall. Had the contest been judged solely by the public in the 36 other competing countries – and not also by national panels often composed of artistic elites who tend to follow a particular woke orthodoxy regarding Israel—she would have won first place. Raphael came in first among the audience votes, but only 14th among the judges’.
For a country that feels badly misunderstood by the world and yearns for love and acceptance, the public vote was seen in many quarters here as proof that Israel’s global standing, frequently portrayed as in a tailspin, is not as dire as we imagine.
Some saw this year’s result, like last year’s – when Israel’s entry “Hurricane” by Eden Golan earned the second-highest number of public votes – as evidence that despite UN resolutions, boycott calls, and streams of reflexive condemnations by many of Europe’s leading politicians (Emmanuel Macron, we’re looking at you), not everyone hates us.
As prominent British journalist Fraser Nelson wrote in The Spectator last year: “For those who want to understand European politics, more can be learned from Eurovision voting than in watching a year of European Parliament debates.” In other words, Eurovision serves as a symbolic diplomatic stage, revealing how countries genuinely feel about one another. It’s much more than “just” a song contest.
Israel's standing in Europe may be much stronger than assumed
If Nelson is correct, then Israel’s standing in parts of Europe may be much stronger than we assumed. In fact, Israel received the maximum 12 points from 13 countries, including some whose governments are not considered especially friendly, such as Belgium, Spain, and Luxembourg.
Even in Ireland – widely considered the most anti-Israel country in the EU – the public gave Israel a respectable 10 points, and the judges awarded seven. There’s a pattern here: Last year, too, Israel received 12 points from 14 of the other 36 participating countries.
Of course, there’s a danger in reading too much into all this. Maybe people were simply voting for the song and the performance, not expressing any deeper political sentiment.
Either way, we have reason to feel proud.
“New day will rise, life will go on,” Raphael belted out in the chorus.
“Everyone cries, don’t cry alone
Darkness will fade, all the pain will go by
But we will stay, even if you say goodbye.”
Not only will we stay, the lyrics could have read, but “We will flourish.”
Just as Raphael has, despite everything she has endured.