Lebanon-born singer Carine Bassili recently made waves on social media after posting an Arabic cover of Eden Golan’s 2024 Eurovision Song Contest entry “Hurricane.”
Bassili told her 9,300 Instagram followers that she decided to play an Arabic version of the song after witnessing the mistreatment suffered by the Israeli songstress at the event in Malmo, Sweden.
“It’s not easy to translate a song to Arabic that fast with hard lyrics but I tried my best to have a small part after I saw how [Golan] was treated in Eurovision,” she wrote.
Despite finishing in respectable fifth place, Golan was loudly booed during her Grand Final performance by the audience members.
The audience inside the auditorium, and thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside, were apparently protesting Israel’s participation in the song contest in the wake of the ongoing war in Gaza.
Bassili, who now lives in the United States, told Israeli news outlet Ynet that she wanted to show Golan her support “because I felt that as an artist competing in a music contest, she was treated very unfairly.”
A few days later, Bassili – who is of Christian faith – posted a video of herself attending a pro-Israel rally in the US.
“Taking this stand is not easy, but the Bible makes the way much easier,” she wrote, adding that it was time for Lebanese Christians to stand alongside Israel.
This isn’t the first time Bassili expressed her appreciation for Israeli culture.
In 2021, Bassili performed a cover of “Refa Na,” a viral prayer song by Israeli artist Yair Levi.
Bassili covered the song in both Hebrew and Arabic. Levi then recorded the Arabic version of the song as a duet with the Lebanese performer.
“I never had any connection to any Jewish people,” Bassili said at the time. “In my country, they’re supposed to be my enemies. But I never considered them as enemies. Our families never taught us to hate.”
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