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    Israel’s Campaign to Win Eurovision Went All the Way to the Top

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    Government social media accounts and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined a campaign to encourage people to vote for Israel’s entrant.Just minutes before Yuval Raphael went onstage to represent Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest final last weekend, the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, posted an appeal to his 1.5 million Instagram followers.“Vote #04 — New Day Will Rise” the prime minister’s post urged followers. “Vote 20 Times!” it added, a nod to the maximum number that viewers are allowed to cast under the contest’s rules.On a day when Israel’s military began mobilizing to advance farther into Gaza, and Israeli and Hamas negotiators were engaged in cease-fire talks, it was perhaps surprising that Netanyahu was weighing in on a spectacular, high-camp pop contest.Yet at a time when Israeli singers and artists are often shunned on the world’s stages over their country’s actions in Gaza, Eurovision appears to have grown in importance for Israel’s government.Eurovision fans vote for a variety of reasons, but Netanyahu’s direct plea was part of a wider effort by the government and pro-Israel groups to generate support for the Israeli contestant, via social media posts, email campaigns and YouTube ads.Israel secured the largest public vote at the final in Basel, Switzerland, which led to a nail-biting end to the show. Israel seemed poised to win right until the last minute of the vote count, when Austria, which had performed better in points from expert juries, leaped ahead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Austria Wins Narrow Victory Over Israel in Eurovision Song Contest

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      Austria’s entrant, JJ, took the prize after a tense count that was neck-and-neck until the last votes were revealed.Austria narrowly edged out Israel to win the Eurovision Song Contest after a tense vote count on Saturday night in which the lead switched repeatedly and the victor became clear only at the last moment.Israel received the most points in the public vote, which accounts for half of the overall tally. Last year, the competition was overshadowed by protests over Israel’s involvement because of the country’s military campaign in Gaza.Austria was represented this year by JJ, a classically trained singer, who performed “Wasted Love,” a dramatic song about heartbreak. He received 436 points to Israel’s 357.Sweden, the pre-event favorite, came fourth.Austria last won the competition in 2014, when Conchita Wurst, a bearded drag queen, triumphed with “Rise Like a Phoenix.”JJ, a 24-year-old whose real name is Johannes Pietsch, is a countertenor, meaning that his vocal range most closely matches that of a female mezzo-soprano. He sings in the choir at the Opera School of the Vienna State Opera, and in recent months has appeared onstage in the company’s productions of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” and Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd.”Accepting the Eurovision winner’s trophy, a tearful JJ thanked the voters and called on them to “spread more love” in the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Yuval Raphael, Israel’s Eurovision Entrant, Survived the Hamas Attacks of Oct. 7

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      Not long after the attacks, Yuval Raphael said, she resolved to follow her long-held dream of becoming a professional singer.When Hamas attacked the Nova music festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Yuval Raphael went from dancing with friends to hiding in a bomb shelter.After attackers broke into the shelter and started shooting partygoers, Raphael played dead, then lay beneath bodies for eight hours until she was rescued.That experience, Raphael told the Israel Hayom newspaper earlier this year, changed her outlook on life. “When I was there, I realized that everything could be over in a moment, and you don’t want your life to end without experiencing it,” she said. Not long after the attacks, Raphael said, she resolved to follow her long-held dream of becoming a professional singer.Now, Raphael, 24, is representing Israel at Eurovision with “New Day Will Rise,” a ballad in which she sings, over twinkling piano, “New day will rise / Life will go on / Everyone cries / Don’t cry alone.”As Israel’s retaliation to the Oct. 7 attacks grinds on, some Eurovision fans have called on the competition organizers to expel Israel from the contest over the country’s conduct in the war.At last year’s final, some audience members booed Israel’s singer as she performed, though others cheered her. Raphael told the BBC this week that she was expecting a hostile reception during her performance and that she had been rehearsing with distracting sounds playing in the background. Indeed, on Thursday in Basel, a small group of protesters blew whistles and waved flags to disrupt one of Raphael’s public rehearsals.But, she told the broadcaster, she was trying to avoid the furor and stay focused on winning. Eurovision’s slogan is “United by music,” she said, adding, “That’s what we are here for.” More

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      in Movies

      Hamdan Ballal, Palestinian Director of ‘No Other Land,’ Is Attacked in West Bank, Witnesses Say

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      Hamdan Ballal was assaulted by masked attackers in his home village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, witnesses said. The Israeli military said he had been detained for questioning.A Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” was beaten bloody near his home by Israeli settlers and detained by the Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank on Monday evening, witnesses said.The director, Hamdan Ballal, was set upon in Susya, his home village, by at least 20 masked people, mostly teenagers armed with rocks, sticks and knives, according to Joseph Kaplan Weinger, 26, who said he had come upon the attack after it began. Mr. Weinger is part of a volunteer initiative that provides protection in areas vulnerable to settler violence.It was not clear what prompted the attack, but Mr. Weinger, who is also a doctoral student in sociology at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the group had descended on Susya, which is south of Hebron, and assaulted West Bank residents as they were breaking the fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Some mockingly shouted holiday blessings as they did so, he said.Mr. Weinger said that he began honking the car horn in an attempt to alert nearby Israeli soldiers to the attack, but that the Israeli forces prevented him and two companions from reaching Mr. Ballal’s home.“Soldiers just stood around,” he said. “Later, when we got there, we saw his blood on the ground.”Mr. Ballal, 37, was one of three Palestinians detained, according to witnesses and the Israeli military. Leah Zemel, a lawyer representing the detainees, said that she had been informed that they were being held in a military center for medical treatment ahead of questioning, but that she did not know the reason for their detention.The Israeli military said in a statement that “several terrorists” had hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles near Susya and prompting a “violent confrontation” that involved “mutual rock hurling between Palestinians and Israelis.” The military said that when its forces and the police arrived, “terrorists” threw rocks at them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      How Yehonatan Indursky Fled His Ultra-Orthodox Life — and Returned

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      Yehonatan Indursky showed me around Ponevezh Yeshiva one evening in January. Known in Israel as “the Harvard of yeshivas,” Ponevezh sits perched on a hill above the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak. We stood at the back of its vast central study hall. Hundreds of white-shirted teenagers and young men packed the room, hugging the lecterns where their leather-bound Talmudic volumes lay open, the holy texts close to their chests, as if the ancient words could be absorbed not only by their minds but also by their bodies.Two decades ago, Indursky was one of them. Tzitzit, the specially knotted tassels a reminder of his relationship with God, dangled at his hips. He was eager to have me see this exalted school, where he had lived and studied. But certain things didn’t look exalted. Except for the gilded aron kodesh, the structure where the Torah scroll is housed, the main study hall was unadorned. The bulbs were bare, maximizing their harsh fluorescent light. The floors of a corridor and study nook were strewed with litter. On the grounds outside, we passed a decrepit refrigerator sitting like forgotten junk. The Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, Indursky said, “are less conscious of superficial things.” Even the dishevelment held spiritual devotion.At Ponevezh, Indursky had dedicated himself to the Torah and Talmud during nearly all his waking hours. But then, when he was 18, he fled the yeshiva. He fled his family. He shed his kipa and high-sitting wide-brimmed black hat. He cut off his payos, the long sacred locks that grew from his temples.He fled — and eventually created “Shtisel,” a television series delving into the world he abandoned, a deeply layered portrait of a Jerusalem family cloistered within Haredi society. And though its niche subject, delicate stories and quiet tone might have doomed it to drift into oblivion, the show was a hit when it debuted in Israel in 2013. For the first of its three seasons, it won 11 Israeli Television Academy Awards, including for best drama series and best drama screenplay. In Israel, The Forward reported, “Shtisel” was everywhere: “Huge billboards featuring the show’s bearded and side-locked characters popped up in secular Tel Aviv, a city where it’s more usual to see images of bikini-clad supermodel Bar Refaeli looming over the freeway.”In the United States, the show was a surprise phenomenon when Netflix brought it here five years later. What came to be known as “Shtisel mania” spread across Jewish communities throughout the country; a pair of events at the Streicker Center at Temple Emanu-El, a Reform synagogue in Manhattan, sold out within hours, drawing more than 4,500 fans.In both countries, the show’s devotees included the Haredi. Despite the ultra-Orthodox ban on television and the blocks installed on their devices to prevent most internet access, many found a way to watch the series. Rigidly isolated as the Haredi are, Indursky said, there are always people in the community ready to assist with working around media restrictions. Indursky’s father, a retired copy editor of religious texts, told me that when “Shtisel” appeared, he was asked by a worshiper at his Jerusalem synagogue, “What is it with your son that he does shame to the community?” But this was the minority view. “The Haredi were excited,” Indursky’s father said. “A lot of people asked could I get them CDs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Bibi Files’ Review: The Case Against Netanyahu

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      This documentary about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel looks at the corruption investigation and his enduring grip on the government.“The Bibi Files” opens by promising to show viewers leaked videos from the police investigation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel (ubiquitously known as Bibi), who is currently standing trial on corruption charges. The videos, a title card says, “are being shown for the first time in this film.”But in some ways the interrogation footage is the least interesting part of this documentary, directed by Alexis Bloom (“Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes”). After decades in the public eye, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are both practiced stonewallers, while their son Yair accuses the officers questioning him of being “a police force of Mafiosos” and participating in a “witch hunt.” More surprising are the snippets from the investigators’ interviews with Miriam Adelson and husband, Sheldon, the hotel and casino magnate who died in 2021. These longtime Netanyahu allies here sound, in admittedly brief clips, like they’re trying to distance themselves from Bibi and Sara.Beyond the videos, the movie takes a thorough, methodical approach to laying out the case against Netanyahu, even if few of its arguments are new. Bloom and her camera subjects trace, over decades, his strengthening grip on the Israeli government, his apparent taste for luxury items and his aggressiveness in stifling criticism. Avi Alkalay, the former editor in chief of the news website Walla, owned by a Netanyahu associate, recalls being pressured to make the publication’s coverage less critical. (The code words, he says, were “less paprika.”) Netanyahu is described as expending precious political capital with John Kerry, then the U.S. secretary of state, to get a visa renewed for the producer Arnon Milchan, who, according to prosecutors, had given the Netanyahus hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts.And if claims about back-scratching, cigars and champagne may seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of Netanyahu’s rule, the film furthers the oft-made case that his methods of avoiding accountability have jeopardized Israel’s security. The documentary examines his alliance with far-right politicians and his continued pursuit of the war in Gaza, which, multiple interviewees argue, no longer has any achievable objective.Many of the most potent statements come from Raviv Drucker, an investigative reporter and a producer of the documentary, and Uzi Beller, a childhood friend who began speaking out against the prime minister. (The first time we see him, he makes clear that he wants to distinguish between two men: He calls them “my kind of Bibi,” rather than “the crowd kind of Bibi,” and “Netanyahu.”)Less persuasive is the film’s portrayal of Sara Netanyahu as a kind of Lady Macbeth figure. (“I think Bibi is afraid of Sara,” says Hadas Klein, a former assistant to Milchan.) That may or may not be accurate, but the characterization has the effect of making excuses for Netanyahu’s own maneuvering. “He knows what he’s doing,” Beller says. “It’s not that he doesn’t know.”The Bibi FilesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Theater

      The Holocaust’s Grandchildren Are Speaking Now

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      Toward the end of “A Real Pain,” a movie written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg coming to theaters on Nov. 1, two first cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin approach the house in a Polish town where their recently deceased grandmother had lived before the Holocaust.Eisenberg’s character, David, the more reserved of the pair, proposes the two leave stones on the doorstep, riffing on the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves.“She’s not buried here,” says Culkin’s cousin, Benji.“Yeah, I know, but it’s the last place she was in Poland,” says David. “It’s the last place any of us were.”The improvised remembrance, the interruption of self-awareness, the confused sense of duty — all are characteristic of how American descendants of the Holocaust’s victims two generations removed today commemorate an event that, nearly 80 years after it ended, can feel like something that still governs their lives, not to mention the lives of Jews and everyone else.This cohort is known as the third generation of Holocaust survivors, and “A Real Pain” is representative of their output. Which is to say: It is often not about the Holocaust at all. The cousins go together on an organized tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in Poland, but much of it — excepting a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp — is lighthearted. David and Benji grieve mainly not for the Holocaust but for their grandmother, who survived it. They struggle with their own problems, including the dissipation of their relationship. They question why they are even there.Jesse Eisenberg on the set of his new movie, “A Real Pain,” about the grandsons of a Holocaust survivor visiting Poland.Agata Grzybowska/Searchlight PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      ‘We Will Dance Again’ Review: Remembering Oct. 7

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      In this documentary by Yariv Mozer, Israelis who attended the Nova music festival near the Gaza border describe how they survived the attack last year.“We Will Dance Again” reconstructs the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 from the perspectives of attendees of the Nova music festival. At least 360 people were killed at the event that was near the border with Gaza, according to Israeli authorities. Directed by Yariv Mozer, this documentary opens with an acknowledgment of the fraught subject matter. “The human cost of the Hamas massacre in Israel and the war that followed in Gaza has been catastrophic for both Israelis and Palestinians,” the text says. Citing death tolls from both sides of the conflict, it adds, “This film cannot tell everyone’s story.”That caveat also hints at why assessing “We Will Dance Again” as a movie is so difficult. Impassioned viewers will undoubtedly have their own opinions, and it would be disingenuous to say that a film released in advance of the attack’s anniversary — and in the middle of an active war — could somehow be seen apart from the divisive politics surrounding the region.Through phone videos, interviews with festivalgoers and, eventually, footage attributed to Hamas fighters, “We Will Dance Again” assembles a timeline of how the attack was experienced at the festival, where people had gathered to attend a multiday rave. Some remember spotting rocket fire as the sun rose on the morning of Oct. 7. “Wow, Lali, there’s fireworks!” one interviewee, Liel Shitrit, known as Lali, quotes a friend as saying. “They really went all out this year!” Soon after, over images of streaks in the sky, we hear an off-camera voice speculate that “the drugs are kicking in.”But the interviewees explain how the reality of the situation became clear. As the film’s narrative unfolds, we hear from witnesses like Noa Beer, who recounts a harrowing escape by car and a call to the police, who she says didn’t yet understand the situation. Elinor Gambarian, a single mother, hid inside a refrigerator.Two of the interviewees, Eitan Halley and Ziv Abud, recall a grenade attack on a roadside shelter where they had taken refuge; both commend efforts by Aner Shapira, who was killed, to toss back grenades before they exploded. Halley says he saw Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage by Hamas and whose body was later recovered, in the immediate aftermath of the blast.While the fluid editing of such disparate source material is impressive, some of Mozer’s aesthetic choices tend to cheapen the testimonies. (The rave-like electronic scoring as Shitrit describes looking for circling birds to see where gunfire was coming from seems particularly unnecessary.) But if the shock of that day’s violence has faded after a year, “We Will Dance Again” aims to keep it visible, and to memorialize it viscerally.We Will Dance AgainNot rated. In Hebrew, English and Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      in Music

      Nemo Wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Switzerland

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      The nonbinary singer Nemo won the high-camp contest, during a night that included pro-Palestinian demonstrations outside the arena and fireworks onstage.The run-up to this Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden, was unusually tense and anguished, with months of protests over Israel’s involvement in the competition, a contestant suspended just hours before the show began and confrontations between the police and pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the arena on the night.But when the final began, the uproar swiftly disappeared. Instead of protests and outrage, there was the usual high-camp spectacle, featuring singers emoting about lost loves, near-naked dancers and, at one point, a performer climbing out of a giant egg.At the end of the four-hour show, Nemo, representing Switzerland, won with “The Code,” a catchy track in which the nonbinary performer rapped and sang operatically about their journey to realizing their identity. “I went to hell and back / To get myself on track,” Nemo sang in the chorus: “Now, I found paradise / I broke the code.”The performance was delivered while Nemo, whose real name is Nemo Mettler and who uses they/them pronouns, balanced on a huge spinning disc.Nemo received strong support from music industry juries in the competition’s participating nations and viewers at home.Martin Meissner/Associated PressFans cheer in Malmo Arena after Nemo’s victory was announced.Gaetan Bally/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More