Eden Golan sings “October Rain”, her song disqualified from Eurovision, during a gathering of hostages

Eden Golan, who represented Israel in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, sang her song “October Rain” Saturday night at a weekly rally in Tel Aviv in support of a deal to free hostages held in Gaza by terrorist groups.

“October Rain” was written to be performed at the competition in Switzerland earlier this month, but the European Broadcasting Union disqualified the song for having a political message.

The song includes lyrics such as “writers of history / stay with me”; “I’m still wet from the October rain/October rain”; and a final section in Hebrew translated as: “There is no more air to breathe/No place, no day-to-day me/They were all good children, every single one of them” – which would be a reference to people killed by Hamas. on October 7.

“This is the first time I’m singing on stage after coming back from Eurovision,” Golan told the crowd gathered at what was christened Place des Otages. “I wanted to do it on this stage, in this square.”

“I wanted to sing ‘October Rain’ tonight and my prayer is to bring everyone home. I will not stop raising our voices in Israel and around the world until everyone returns home,” she said.

Golan finished in fifth place in the international competition with a reformulated version, entitled “Huragan”.

Israel’s participation in Eurovision was overshadowed by animosity from other contestants, boos from some members of the public and pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli rallies outside the venue in Malmö, Sweden, over the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. Golan remained defiant throughout, vowing that she would not allow the protests to hold her back.

Saturday evening’s event at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square was billed as an “international gathering,” a step up from the weekly protests held there. Organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, it was designed to attract the attention of the global community and rally other countries to pressure Hamas to release the 128 hostages still held in the Strip. Gaza.

Between speeches by hostage families and foreign diplomats at the rally, musical performances by musicians including Noga Erez and Lola Marsh were interspersed.

American social content producer Montana Tucker was also in attendance, closing the event by performing the national anthem Hatikva. Tucker, who has more than 3 million followers on Instagram and 18 million on the video-sharing platform TikTok, has clearly supported Israel since the start of the war.

On October 7, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas carried out a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The 3,000 attackers who stormed across the border into the Gaza Strip and then murderously rampaged through southern areas of Israel also kidnapped 252 people as hostages in Gaza.

Israel responded to the attack with a military offensive to destroy Hamas, overthrow its regime in Gaza and free the hostages.

Some hostages were released during a temporary truce in November, others were rescued and the bodies of others were found by the IDF in Gaza. There are 128 hostages still in captivity, some of whom are no longer alive. The Israeli army announced during the week that it had recovered the bodies of four other hostages.