Nova massacre survivor Yuval Raphael will sing “New Day Will Rise” in Israel’s Eurovision entry

(JTA) — Israel has released the video for “New Day Will Rise,” its entry to the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest that focuses on the theme of emerging from darkness.

In the video, Yuval Raphael, selected as the country’s representative for the annual contest, sings in a field of red anemones, Israel’s national flower, after connecting with a crowd of young people who are reminiscent of the attendees of the Nova music festival where Hamas killed more than 380 people on Oct. 7, 2023. Raphael survived the massacre.

“New day will rise, life will go on / Everyone cries, don’t cry alone / Darkness will fade, all the pain will go by / But we will stay,” belts Raphael, with lyrics that could reflect both personal and national determination.

The song is mostly in English, with a verse in French and a line in Hebrew, quoting from Jewish scripture: “Vast floods cannot quench love, nor rivers drown it.”

The song has passed muster with Eurovision, which last year sent back Israel’s entry for revision after it was deemed overly political. The contest takes place in May in Basel, Switzerland, and will feature at least one Jewish entrant other than Raphael — Asaf Mishiyev, a member of the Azerbaijani band Mamagama.

 

Raphael, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre, secured the position in January 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.

Raphael 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.”

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.”