YUVAL RAPHAEL

Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Supernova music festival massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, will represent Israel at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Basel, Switzerland, in May.

Raphael won the finals of the “” (“Rising Star”) song contest on Jan. 22. The season-long singing competition, which is broadcast on Israel’s Channel 12, selects the country’s representative to the popular European song contest.

Stand Up, Sing

Raphael sealed her victory with “two unforgettable performances” in the finals: ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and “Writing’s on the Wall” by Sam Smith, Channel 12 reported.

She has said that she wants to represent those who didn’t survive the massacre.

“That’s why I want to be there—for all the angels who couldn’t be here now,” Raphael told Kan Reshet Bet radio. “I got to fulfill a lifelong dream and others are left there only in the shadows. It’s the only thing left of them—this shadow still dancing. That’s why it’s crucial to represent us. That’s why I want to be there; to bring the voice forward, because it’s so important.”

Four days after the massacre, Rafael was interviewed along with other survivors by Channel 12.

“We were at a party, and around 6 a.m., a barrage of missiles began,” she said. “We all rushed to the car, we were five friends—two of them are currently hospitalized.

“When we got to the car, there was a crazy mass of people and vehicles trying to get out [of the festival area]. In the end, when we reached the road, we saw a [bomb] shelter, so we decided to stop on the side and enter it to protect ourselves from the [Gazan] missiles,” she said.

Raphael, 24, hid in the bomb shelter for seven hours. Hamas terrorists threw grenades into the shelter. Raphael, pretending to be dead, hid underneath the bodies of the dead. Forty young people entered the shelter at the start of the Hamas invasion. Ten left alive.

More than 360 people were killed at the music festival. Hamas-led terrorists murdered some 1,200 that day in a surprise attack from the Gaza Strip. They kidnapped 251.