Yuval Raphael will represent Israel at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland with “New Day Will Rise,” the country’s Kan public broadcaster announced on Sunday as it officially revealed the Jewish state’s entry.
The three-minute song, sung by Raphael and written by Israeli singer and songwriter Keren Peles, is primarily in English, with several lines in French and Hebrew. Raphael is set to perform in the second half of the second semi-final on May 15.
“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/Even if you say goodbye,” Raphael sings in English in the power ballad’s chorus.
The Hebrew is a line from the biblical Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, which translates to: “Vast floods cannot quench love, nor rivers drown it,” while the French is a translation of the English portions of the song.
In a statement on Sunday, Raphael said that “for me, the song represents the healing that we all need and the optimism for the days ahead—our future. The song speaks about our strength, all of ours, our shared hope, the support and love of such beautiful people in our country.”
Peles said the entry represents the “new sunrise” that the Jewish state is longing for after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border massacre and the subsequent ground war with the terror organization in the Gaza Strip.
The lyrics and the video of the Israeli entry were formally approved last month by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the annual musical extravaganza. Last year, Jerusalem was only allowed to compete after it removed references to the Oct. 7 terrorist slaughter.
Raphael’s music video shows a group of young people gathered together in song and dance, which every Israeli understands as a reference to the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova festival, where 364 people were murdered. Red anemones, a symbol of Israel’s south, can also be seen in the video clip.
Raphael, 24, survived the Nova festival by hiding in a bomb shelter for hours. 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.
“We were at a party, and around 6 a.m., a barrage of missiles began,” the musician told Israel’s Channel 12 days after the massacre. “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 [Hamas] missiles,” she retold.
Israel has won the Eurovision Song Contest four times: 1978, 1979, 1998 and 2018. According to Eurovision bookmakers, Sweden is the favorite this year. Raphael’s entry is ranked as the third favorite by oddsmakers.
