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.

The post Nova Music Festival Survivor Yuval Raphael to Represent Israel at Eurovision first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Anti-Israel protesters march through the streets of the township of Lenasia in Johannesburg, South Africa, Oct. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ihsaan Haffejee

According to the Talmud, Rabban Gamliel banned any student whose deeds were not in keeping with their values (Brachot 28a). This left him with an exceptionally small crop of students. One rabbi says that when his decree was lifted, 700 benches had to be added to accommodate the many more students who could then attend.

While hypocrisy is as old as time itself, sometimes it is so flagrant, glaring, and infuriating that we can’t help but take note.

South Africa has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. It has led the charge against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of genocide and demanding that the court intervene to help Gaza’s citizens.

In its original petition to the ICJ, submitted in December of 2023, South Africa declared the situation in Gaza to be “a moral failure causing intolerable suffering” (par. 44). It accused Israel of not only killing and injuring large numbers of Palestinians, but also depriving them of food and water, medical care, shelter, clothing, hygiene, and sanitation (par. 43). It accused Israeli leaders of making statements that demonstrated genocidal intent, such as then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying, “Israel would impose a complete siege on Gaza.” (par. 101). Although Gallant’s words were purposefully misinterpreted, South Afrtica tried to claim that Israel wanted to deliberately starve the people of Gaza.

You might be surprised, then, to find out how South Africa recently treated destitute migrants who unlawfully entered shuttered mines in an attempt to extract left-behind minerals they could sell to meet their basic needs.

The South African government was so enraged by this, that it forbid any food, water, or other humanitarian assistance from reaching them in an effort to starve them out.

One government minister explained that the miners are criminals, and therefore don’t deserve anything. At one mine, more than 100 people died of starvation and dehydration underground.

The South African Federation of Trade Unions said that at one site, 101 survivors emerged resembling “walking ghosts” after enduring weeks without supplies. It called the episode one of the most horrific displays of state willful negligence in recent history. It further condemned government officials’ statements that they would “smoke out” the miners, saying this amounted to state-sanctioned murder.

And let’s remember that these people went down the mineshafts illegally only in a desperate effort to survive. They had committed no violence against South Africa and posed no threat to the country.But just the fact that they were breaking laws out of economic necessity was enough for South Africa to treat them this way.

Sadly, this is typical of many human rights campaigns. Rights are only important when they can be used to condemn whatever group activists are interested in attacking. Worse or similar violations elsewhere mean nothing, and the people lobbing furious condemnation at others for violating rights would trample those same rights in an instant if they believed that was needed for their own well-being or security.

Even as the cease-fire brings us images of throngs of healthy, jubilant Gaza citizens parading through the streets declaring victory, making the genocide charge even more obviously false, it would be naïve to expect South Africa or its allies to change their minds. A country that starves common criminals at home while self-righteously accusing Israel of not allowing enough food to enter Gaza is not interested in human rights, but rather is pursuing its own political agenda. We can only hope that ostensibly legal forums such as the International Court of Justice will see through South Africa’s political opportunism and issuing a ruling based on law.

But most tragic is that by spuriously and hypocritically accusing Israel of genocide, South Africa has further exposed the political bias and double standards that unfortunately are so often at the root of human rights advocacy. This reduces human rights from lofty ideals for a better future, to a weapon that can be cynically exploited for political gain. What a shame.

Shlomo Levin is the author of the Human Rights Haggadah, and he writes about legal developments related to human rights issues of interest to the Jewish community. You can find him at https://hrhaggadah.com/.

The post Condemn Israel, Starve Miners: South African Hypocrisy Makes a Mockery of Human Rights first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A man looks at pictures and memorabilia related to fallen soldiers, hostages, and people killed during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, ahead of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, at a public square in Tel Aviv, Israel, Jan. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem

On January 20, the BBC News website published a filmed report on its Middle East page, under the headline “Moment freed Palestinian prisoners reunite with family and friends”:

Ninety Palestinians were released from Israeli jails as part of the first phase in a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Footage shows the prisoners, mostly woman and children, greeted by cheers upon arrival as people gathered to welcome them in the occupied West Bank.

In exchange for these prisoners, three hostages were released from Gaza to Israel.

That 59-second-long filmed report does not include any commentary or subtitles beyond “Palestinian prisoners freed” and “West Bank” in its opening frame.

It does show the same released prisoner twice — between 00:18 and 00:22 and between 00:45 and 00:54 — without any context provided to viewers:

Also on January 20, listeners to the BBC World Service radio station and BBC Radio 4 heard a report on that story from Jon Donnison.

In the version aired on Newshour, presenter Tim Franks told listeners (from 15:41 here) that: [emphasis in italics in the original]

Franks: “Hours after the release of those three Israeli hostages, ninety Palestinian prisoners — women and teenage boys — were freed from Israeli jails. Thirty prisoners for each hostage. Our correspondent Jon Donnison watched that detainee release take place in the West Bank.”

At 17:17 Donnison described one of those released — the same woman who appeared in the BBC’s filmed report — as follows:

Donnison: “Among them was 62-year-old Khalida Jarrar — a politician from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] — jailed after the October 7th attack. She said it was a bittersweet moment.”

Listeners then heard a voice-over translation of comments made by Jarrar — but Donnison did not bother to inform listeners around the world that the PFLP is an internationally-designated terrorist organization, which took part in the October 7 massacre.

Neither did he bother to clarify that Khalida Jarrar was arrested in 2015 and charged with being a member of the PFLP and inciting people to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Jarrar confessed to those charges and under the terms of a plea bargain, was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment.

After her release, Jarrar became one of the heads of the PFLP in Judea & Samaria, and she was re-arrested in October 2019 following the terror attack perpetrated by that terrorist organization in which 17-year-old Rina Shnerb was murdered.

Once again, Jarrar confessed to the charges and was sentenced to 24 months in prison. While serving that sentence, Jarrar chose to once again run for political office on behalf of the PFLP terrorist organization. She was released in September 2021.

As was noted here in 2019, the BBC elected to ignore the arrests of PFLP operatives in connection with that terror attack.

Readers may also recall that in 2014, Jon Donnison portrayed a PFLP “fighter commander” as a “charity worker.”

The BBC’s failure to adequately explain the terror links of Palestinian prisoners is of course by no means new: audiences saw the same style of reporting in November 2023 and indeed long before that.

Nevertheless, BBC audiences obviously cannot properly understand the story that the corporation purports to report in these two items — or similar future ones —  if they are not provided with an accurate and impartial portrayal of the reasons why those now being released from prison by Israel were detained in the first place and the terrorist organizations to which they are linked.

Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK — an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The Media Hides the Murders and Crimes of Palestinian ‘Prisoners’ Released in Hostage Swap first appeared on Algemeiner.com.