Eurovision winner, Netta Barzilai, reveals how her life has changed since October 7th, the hypocrisy from the Eurovision production, and the transition to creating music for the Israeli audience.

Last Sunday, an interview with Israeli Eurovision winner Netta Barzilai aired on Roni Kuban‘s podcast “The Light at the End.” The podcast is an original production of Beit Avi Chai. In the interview, the singer revealed why she was hurt by the Eurovision 2024 production, why she chose to create songs focusing on the Israeli audience, and the powerful experience of performing for evacuees from Kibbutz Be’eri, which lost a tenth of its residents to murder and had 31 members kidnapped.

Netta Barzilai: Challenges as an Israeli Artist

On October 7th, Netta was scheduled to perform in Yarkon Park alongside international star Bruno Mars. The show was canceled early that day with Hamas’s attack. The singer halted her planned performances and began donating food to soldiers and performing at hotels for evacuees.

The singer revealed the great difficulty in creating Israeli content for an international audience during this time, and what caused her to focus on the Israeli audience as a primary target:

“I’m from Israel. I’m not happy anywhere else. That was always clear to me. I’m an international artist who makes music as an Israeli. And now when it’s very difficult to be an international Israeli, I’m Israeli. I told myself – I’m shifting myself, at least for now, from work that’s entirely in English to work that’s entirely in Hebrew. It’s also natural because I didn’t want to talk to the world. There was a feeling that it doesn’t understand what we’re going through.”

Experiences of Hatred and Anti-Israeli Sentiment

Barzilai experienced hatred and anti-Israeli sentiment from the world even before October 7th. One of the experiences she remembers occurred at last year’s Maltese Pride parade:

“Even before October 7th, I had a performance at Malta’s Pride parade. Suddenly I start receiving messages: ‘You’re not welcome, don’t come here..’. I notified the Israeli embassy about the messages I received and suggested they send a security guard. Beyond the fact that I’m Israeli, I’m not connected to politics. I create music that is apolitical. Today I feel I have a lot of responsibility to understand this thing, but not then. I go on stage and the moment they announce ‘Netta Barzilai’ a wall of Palestinian flags rises. It was 30 people who lined up in a row in the crowd, but they were a wall. I see this happening, I can’t believe it, I start crying backstage and told the production: ‘I can’t go up.. What will I do?’ It’s a second before a TV broadcast and I’m really scared. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, until Eden Golan at Eurovision now. I experienced 30 people in a crowd screaming at you while you’re singing, but what she experienced – one can only stand and admire that.”

Despite the great hatred Netta has experienced and continues to experience, she claims she would not have been able to cope with the levels of hatred our representative, Eden Golan, faced at the last Eurovision:

“I definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Because I truly believe that my intentions and my essence in the world, and the essence of music in general, is to shed light where there is darkness, and I don’t want to believe that I am darkness.”

Members of the Russian band Little Big, who were supposed to represent Russia at Eurovision 2020, have collaborated with Netta in the past on the song “Moustache” and are still in touch with her. Barzilai shares their experiences after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, due to their opposition to Putin’s regime:

“The world is not aware of the complexity that exists. I have friends named Sonya and Ilich who are part of a band called ‘Little Big’. It’s one of the biggest bands in Russia. The moment the war in Russia started, they left Russia and posted on their Instagram ‘Stop the war’. They were expelled from their country and are not allowed to return to it. It’s a huge sacrifice. But even that didn’t make the world love them, so to speak. It’s simply standing on the right side of history.”

Boycotts Against Israel in Eurovision

Large segments of the Eurovision community boycotted Israel this year, but this was also evident in the segments that the Eurovision production chose to show, or more accurately, to avoid showing:

“Last year at Eurovision they brought me and lowered me on a kind of flying bird and I inflated to a height of ten meters, and this year when they showed the clip of all the winners from all the years, I wasn’t there. Now, just a year ago they laid out quite a sum to lift me in the air and make me into a crazy number. The appreciation for me in this Eurovision mythology is great, and in one moment you’re erased.”

Lack of Global Understanding

Barzilai shared her frustration with the world’s lack of understanding not only of the Israeli side but also of the reality we experience on a daily basis:

“No one understands what it means to live here. No one knows what it’s like to serve in the army, what it’s like to fear losing friends, what it’s like to lose friends, that your existence is constantly in doubt. They don’t have such awareness. I have to be compassionate towards this, because otherwise I won’t be in communication with the world. Which is a bit what happened to me.”