IBA opened the public song submission following the announcement of Ma'uda as the selected artist with the deadline on 6 January 2008. IBA also directly invited composers to submit songs for the competition. 450 submissions were received at the close of the deadline, of which 350 were submitted by the public. Five songs were chosen for the competition by a professional committee with members from IBA and Keshet and announced on 23 January 2008. Among the competing composers was the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1998, Dana International. The members of the committee were Yoav Ginai (entertainment director of IBA), Haim Hador (radio presenter), Yaakov Naveh (IBA artists representative), Tamira Yardeni ("Kochav Nolad" producer), Yoav Tzafir (director of "Kochav Nolad"), Uri Selai (editor at Tedy Productions) and Tzedi Tzarfati (judging panel member of "Kochav Nolad"). Prior to the final, the songs were presented on 21 February 2008 during a special presentation programme broadcast online via IBA's official Eurovision Song Contest website "Eurovil", hosted by Jason Danino-Holt.