Israeli national broadcaster Kan presented on Sunday evening a rewritten version of its Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) entry after organizers forced it to change the lyrics because the original words were deemed too political.
The singer Eden Golan sang the song "Hurricane" in a video that the broadcaster aired for the first time.
The previous song, "October Rain," had been too political for the organizer of the song contest, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) in Geneva.
"October Rain" contained apparent allusions to the massacre by Hamas and other extremist groups on October 7. The terrorists murdered around 1,200 people in southern Israel and deported a further 250 to the Gaza Strip.
If the lyrics had not been reworked, the Israeli participant would have been threatened with exclusion from the song contest.
According to the broadcaster, "Hurricane" has the same melody as "October Rain" but is now about a young woman who has gone through a personal crisis.
Even though Israel is not a European country, it is allowed to participate in the ESC because Israel's public broadcaster is a member of the EBU.
The Jewish state made its Eurovision debut in 1973 and has won the contest four times - most recently in 2018. It hosted the competition in Jerusalem in 1979 and 1999 and in Tel Aviv in 2019.