Thirty-nine countries are competing with the aim to lift the trophy in Malmö. The twenty-second country to be introduced is Israel. The country won the Eurovision Song Contest three times. This year the Moran Mazor will represent Israel in Sweden.

Basic information

Performer: Moran Mazor
Song: Rak bishvilo
Language: Hebrew
Music: Han Harari
Lyrics: Gal Sarig

The song

This year’s Israeli entry is a ballad. Moran Mazor sings about her lover as she does everything for him. Infact the translation of the title of her song is Only for him.

שוב בלילות עוצר הגשם טיפותיו
עוד מנסה לגנוב חיוך מבין שפתיו
כמה שתיקות אומרות וכמה מסתירות
כמה אמת נותרה בין כל התהיות

רק בשבילו,
אוכל לשכוח את הקור
ובזכותו,
אמצא בחושך את האור
רק בשבילו,
אלך אחצה את הגבולות
רק איתו אדע תשובות לשאלות

The performer

Moran Mazor was born in Holon, a suburb next to Tel Aviv. Moran was accepted to the town music trend, and the director discovered the singing talent in her. Since then she took part in all activities of the trend, as pianist and as a singer. After a full year at the military service Moran Mazor went for auditions for the first season of the program Eyal Golan is calling you, a reality TV show that discovers talents. In this talent show she won the first place. Then Mazor started working on her first album along with Eyal Golan, and she accompanied him on a special tour across Israel with her original songs.

The songwriters

Han Harari and Gal Sarig penned this year’s Israeli song for the Eurovision Song Contest. Han Harari is a relatively new to the Eurovision scene. He is better known as Chen Harari. Gal Sarig wrote the lyrics of the song. Sarig is not new to the Israeli selection as he tried to represent Israel in the past as a writer.

The national selection

IBA’s Eurovision committee decided to do select its entry and representative through the Kdam selection. Ten acts competed in the final and Rak bishvilo got selected.

Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest

Israel joined the Eurovision Song Contest in 1973 and had a successful debut finishing fourth. The country did not have to wait very long for its first victory either, as that came in 1978. A second victory followed the year after on home ground and another time in 1998. Despite some low rankings in the 2000s, Israel did well in 2005 and 2008 finishing fourth and ninth respectively.

Statistics

This will be Israel’s 36th participation in the Eurovision Song Contest. For the twelfth time in total Israel is represented by a female solo singer. Israel remains one of the countries that had all of its entries at least partly performed in a national language. This year’s entry is entirely performed in Hebrew. The last time this happened was when Harel Skaat competed in Oslo, three years ago.

Israeli vote in Eurovision

Israel gave its most points to the United Kingdom while the Middle Eastern country received the most points from France. Since the introduction of the semi-final in 2004, Israel gave its most points to Russia.

The betting odds

According to oddschecker.com, Israel is currently standing at number 23 in the odds to win the Eurovision Song Contest and at number 8 to qualify to the final from semi-final two.

אנחנו רוצים שישראל ומורן מזור בתוצאה טובה מאלמו

Videos

Preview clip

Haahat sheli
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a8y-0i0q98

Ani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9AO4MkpgDo

Tomorrow another country will be introduced (Five euphoric victories!)

Have your say

You can rate the Israeli entry by voting in our poll

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You can view previous parts of this series by clicking here