Just 18 months ago, Yuval Raphael lay buried beneath a pile of dead bodies.

The 24-year-old had been attending the Nova music festival with friends when Hamas stormed the venue amid the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

As she cowered in a bomb shelter, on the phone to her distraught father, terrorists entered and shot everyone inside.

Over the next eight hours, they came back 19 times to spray the shelter with bullets or throw in grenades.

Throughout, Yuval followed the last advice her father gave before the phone cut out: ‘Play dead.’

Surrounded by severed limbs, between barrages she dragged bloodied, lifeless bodies over herself for protection.

The agonising weight of the corpses pressed down on her broken leg – shattered in the first attack – as she made peace with joining them.

Finally, though, help arrived. When it did, it took several men to lift the bodies from Yuval to free her.

She discovered she was one of just 11 who had survived, crammed in a tiny, four-metre squared concrete bunker filled with some 50 people.

As she would later remark, it was a shelter ‘that had become the tomb for almost 40 souls seeking refuge with us’.

For anyone who had endured such unimaginable hell at a music event, they would be forgiven for not wanting to attend another gig ever again.

Yet Raphael, who still has shrapnel lodged in her head and leg from the horror on October 7, is not only returning to a music venue, but performing – and on one of the most hostile stages in the world for an Israeli. 

In just two weeks, she will represent her country at the Eurovision finals in Basel, Switzerland.

Is she daunted? Quite the reverse. In her first interview since being selected to sing at the contest, she says: ‘I’ve been given another chance at life, so it’s my duty to not be afraid – and to spread the light.

‘I see it as an honour and a responsibility.’

She added: ‘I love my country, I love the Israeli people 

‘I also have the most amazing team behind me with all the tools to deal with this situation.

‘I am focused on the song and have been working night and day on it for the last four months, practicing to be the best I can to bring honour to my country.’

After what happened at last year’s competition, however, Yuval can be under no illusion as to what awaits her.

Her predecessor, Eden Golan, was subjected to the most toxic campaign of abuse and intimidation in the competition’s history.

Shunned by fellow competitors who tried to humiliate her at press conferences, she was nearly disqualified following a row over her song lyrics, and faced tens of thousands – including Greta Thunberg – protesting her right to be there.

Eden received so many death threats the head of Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet personally travelled to Malmo, Sweden, to help oversee her protection.

Locked down in her hotel room between auditions – each marked by relentless booing – simply performing was a victory in itself.

But, on the night, she overcame deafening screams from the hostile audience to claim the second most votes from the public – thanks in part to 12 points from the UK – and came fifth overall when the jury’s verdict was taken in.

Yuval has since met with Eden who helped teach her the tricks she used to stare down the cowardly haters and win over the public at large.

‘Eden is such an amazing person and such a beautiful person,’ she said. ‘It was enlightening to talk to someone that knows what I am going through, and who went through the same experience, and who knows the excitement and hard work.

‘We both really talked about the same state of mind, just concentrating on the main thing – the song and the performance.

‘There are things I can control and things that I can’t, and I choose to put my energy on the things that I can control.

‘Eden did what she did because she was very focused on the competition – that is why she didn’t let it get to her.

‘I am coming this year with an open heart and everything else is out of my control.’

Just last week the European Broadcasting Union overturned a ban on Palestinian flags at this year’s competition – and they are expected to be out in numbers come May 17.

In recent days, too, Iceland’s national broadcaster joined those of Spain and Slovenia in objecting to Israel’s participation.

Her courage in deciding to run this toxic gauntlet is made all the more remarkable when you learn that this is not the first time she asked to enter.

Last year, she put her hat in the ring to compete – only for her therapist to intervene, saying she was not ready.

But, despite then witnessing how Eden was treated, she went again last January to win The Rising Star TV show and be crowned Israel’s 2025 Eurovision contestant.

Yuval says it is quite simple for her. She is unafraid because singing has always helped her overcome adversity – not least in these most difficult past 18 months.

‘Music has helped me my entire life,’ she tells us. ‘Every single time that I have needed even to enhance emotions, not just sadness but happiness, I turn to music.

‘It’s my safe place and this past year has been an integral part of my recovery and I am so lucky to do it as a career.’

The location, too, could be seen by some as intimidating. This week the Swiss fencing team caused outrage by turning their back on the gold-winning Israeli team at the European Championships.

And last year their winning Eurovision act, Nemo, boycotted the rehearsal of the flag parade in protest of Eden being allowed to compete.

But Yuval, who is supported by a delegation from Israeli broadcaster KAN, brushes off any question of negativity at the host nation – and says that she is only looking forward to returning to the country where she grew up. 

‘I am excited, it’s like a second home to me,’ she said. While born in Pedaya, central Israel, she moved with her parents to Geneva when she was six and lived there for three happy years.

Such is the love of her roots that she sings part of her song in French – as well as lyrics in English and Hebrew.

And just weeks after October 7 she chose to return there to help her recovery.

While back in Geneva she made another remarkably brave decision to give testimony of what she had suffered at the UN Human Rights Council in March last year.

There she told them how she ‘witnessed unspeakable horrors.’

Describing her eight hours of hell, she said: ‘Friends and strangers alike were injured and killed in front of my eyes when the bodies of those murdered fell on us.

‘I understood that hiding under them was the only way I could survive the nightmare.

‘After eight hours of constant fear, only I and 10 others were saved from our four square metre shelter – a shelter that had become the tomb for almost 40 souls seeking refuge with us.

‘The physical injuries I sustained are healing, but the mental scars will stay with me forever.’

Yuval has since given testimony several times in local Israeli news interviews about what she endured that day.

Perhaps fearful now of breaching Eurovision’s strict rules against political messaging, she declines to revisit those tragic moments – stating that doing so can trigger her PTSD.

Israel’s song name had to be changed last year from ‘October Rain’ and to ‘Hurricane’ and lyrics altered as they clearly depicted events of October 7 – something deemed unacceptable by officials.

This year’s entry, New Day Will Rise, has an altogether more uplifting, less confrontational feel.

Yuval said that it ‘represents the healing that we all need and the optimism for the days ahead — our future’.

It has already jumped to fifth spot in the favourites, and the singer has dared to dream she could go all the way.

‘Anything can happen,’ Yuval says. ‘I am hoping and believing and really focused on bringing the best performance I can.

‘The team and I are dedicated and working around the clock to make it happen the best way we can.’

With all she has been through, Yuval knows there are more important things in life than winning a singing competition – no matter the grand stage.

Away from music, she wants the 59 hostages who remain in Gaza – held there in squalid conditions since the day she was cowering in that bombshelter – to be freed.

‘We need to bring them home right now,’ she says, a glimmer of pain appearing on her face for the first time in our interview at their mention.

‘I am very clear about that, they should have been home already.’

But she also wants to spread joy.

‘I come to the Eurovision with the most transparent agenda,’ she says. ‘I come with an open heart, and I want to open my heart to anyone that is willing to receive it.’

Yuval hopes that Eurovision rediscovers the meaning of its own slogan, ‘United by Music’ – a message that has felt all but forgotten this past year.

‘I think my song has such a beautiful message,’ she says. ‘There is a phrase that says “Everyone cries, don’t cry alone”. Let’s all be united together – and spread the love.’