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Nova Music Festival Survivor Yuval Raphael to Represent Israel at Eurovision

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. Photo: Screenshot
JNS.org — 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 “Hakochav Haba” (“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.
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 said 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.”
“That’s why it’s important for me to represent us. That’s why I want to be there—for all the angels who couldn’t be here now.”
Listen to the heartfelt words of Yuval Raphael, a survivor of Nova, who will represent Israel at Eurovision 2025. pic.twitter.com/7wnZ1X6SXB
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) January 23, 2025
Four days after the massacre, Rafael was interviewed along with other survivors by Channel 12.
“We were at a party, and around 6 am, 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 in total 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.
On Wednesday and Thursday, many well-wishers congratulated her on social media.
“Mazel Tov YuvalRaphael — Israel’s next representative to the @eurovision competition and the winner of The Rising Star contest. Yuval is a Nova survivor and now she says her relationship with music has an even more emotional meaning. She’s not only telling her story of survival,” tweeted actress Noa Tishby, who served as Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization from 2022 to 2023.
The semi-final draw on Jan. 28 will determine in which Eurovision semifinal Raphael will compete, on May 13 or 15, in an effort to make it to the final on May 17.
Israel has won the Eurovision Song Contest four times: 1978, 1979, 1998 and 2018. According to Eurovision bookmakers, Belgium is the favorite this year. But since Raphael’s selection, Israel has been moved from fifth to third favorite by the oddsmakers.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials

FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say

Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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