The television board of the Israeli broadcaster IBA approved this evening the members of the special committee which will select the artist who will represent the country in the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki.

IBA's committee will consist of 13 members, among them a couple of well known names in the world of Eurovision- Composer Kobi Oshrat, who won the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest with Hallelujah and went on to compose and conduct several other Israeli entries, will be one of the members. Another name is Yardena Arazi. She first participated in Eurovision back in 1976 as a member of the Chocolate, Menta, Mastik triplet. In 1979 she co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Jerusalem. During the 1980's Arazi tried several times to win a ticket to Eurovision on her own through the Kdam-Eurovision. She had to wait until 1988 when she was internally selected by IBA to represent Israel in Dublin, where she finished 7th with Ben-Adam.

The committee, headed by IBA's head of delegation to Eurovision, Yitzhak Sonnenshein, will also include younger musicians such as Mika Karni and Daniel Solomon. It is now clear that at first, the committee will select an artist to be sent to Helsinki. Later on, the artist will have to present several songs, from which the committee or the public (via a televised final) will select the final entry to Helsinki. The shortlist of artists, whom the IBA consider as candidates, include: Har'el Ska'at, Keren Peles, Ninet Tayeb andMaya Buskila. Another name isthe duo Henree featuting Nikka, who, as exclusively reported here on esctoday.com a few days ago, are seriously considering to accept such an invitation by IBA to sing for Israel.

Due to Eddie Butler's disappointing 23rd position in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, the 2007 Israeli entrant will have to first compete in the semifinal, on May 10th.