Carine Bassili did not expect her classical Arabic cover of Israeli artist Eden Golan’s fifth-placed Eurovision song “ Hurricane ” to gain such popularity. But a short video clip from the song shared on Instagram by her friend Jonathan Elhoury, a Lebanese-Israeli activist , has racked up nearly 14,000 likes. “It was just a small gesture to support her,” said 39-year-old Lebanese artist Bassili, who is now living in the United States, in an interview with The Times of Israel.
“I saw all the abuse she got on social media, and what happened to her in Sweden.” During the Eurovision contest in Malmo on May 7-11, the Israeli singer was repeatedly booed on stage and was accompanied by a heavy security presence throughout the competition in light of a wide range of threats. Various anti-Israel protests were held in the Scandinavian city during her stay.
Lebanon-born Bassili is an ardent supporter of the Jewish state, a notable exception in a country that has never had diplomatic ties with Jerusalem and from which Islamist terror group Hezbollah has been launching deadly projectiles at Israel on a daily basis since October 8. She left Lebanon for the US 19 years ago. Her childhood was marred by the internecine Lebanese civil war, which erupted as a conflict between Christians and Palestinian insurgents in 1975 and expanded to encompass vast segments of Lebanon’s sectarian society, lasting until 1990.
She grew up in a Christian area of Beirut near Dahia, the Hezbollah s.