Israel has qualified for this weekend’s Eurovision song contest grand finale, defying thousands of demonstrators marching in host country Sweden over the Gaza conflict, AFP reports.

Singer Eden Golan performed her song “Hurricane” in Thursday’s second semi-final in front of 9,000 spectators at the host city’s Malmo Arena and booked her place in the final thanks to viewers’ votes.

Israel now joins the group of 26 nations that will compete on Saturday in a contest watched around the world by millions of lovers of the pop sounds — and kitschy shows — that Eurovision promises each year.

Golan’s song is an adaptation of an earlier version named “October Rain”, which she modified after contest organisers deemed it too political because of its apparent allusions to Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.

As she prepared for her performance, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished Golan good luck and said she had “already won” by enduring the protests that he called a “horrible wave of anti-Semitism”.