Eurovision again proves interesting

The cultural elites, disgusted with Israel, are a) not with the masses and b) mulishly indifferent to the power of a spectacular narrative

On October 7, 2023, Yuval Raphael was 22 and dancing at the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Be’eri. Then the massacre began. She fled into a concrete shelter with scores of others. Grenades were thrown in. Shrapnel tore through the air. There are audio recordings of her frantically calling her father. “I’m hiding from terrorists,” she cries. “Play dead!” he implores. “Hang up!” She lay under corpses for eight hours. A handful emerged alive.

Raphael had spent part of her childhood in Geneva. As a kid, she loved Led Zeppelin, the Scorpions, Beyoncé, Céline Dion — and it turns out she is truly a great singer. When she won Israel’s competition for representing the country at the campy but iconic Eurovision Song Festival, it was not a stitch-up at all. So nineteen months after the attack in which 1,200 people were massacred, she walked onto the stage in Basel this weekend as Israel’s contestant. Her song, A New Day Will Rise, plainly referenced the war. It wasn’t brilliant. It wasn’t awful. But it was deeply felt, well delivered, and more moving by a mile than most of the schlock competitors (it’s a tradition).

The judges — music professionals appointed by each country — placed her 15th (in a laborious nation-by-nation point announcement process that takes an hour). But then came the audience-drive second round (in which many millions from each country by phone), which she won by far, all across Europe, including in countries like Ireland and Spain where official attitudes toward Israel have been openly hostile. Balancing the two she came in second.

There is a familiar pattern here.