Boy George lands in Israel

Boy George did not need a red carpet, when he arrived in Israel over the weekend. For the Culture Club frontman, being in Israel is good enough.

The musician, whose hits include Karma Chameleon and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, flew in ahead of two Tel Aviv concerts. One of them is dedicated to the Nova community and their families.

Greeting him were World Jewish Congress Israel president Sylvan Adams and Live Nation Israel co-owner Guy Besser, whose company is responsible for the performances. Adams, an Israeli-Canadian philanthropist, kept his welcome short.

“Welcome to Israel, we deeply appreciate your friendship, and your understanding that these are challenging times for Israel and the Jewish people,” he said, before going on to describe Israel’s confrontation with Iran and radical Islamist groups as part of a wider struggle affecting the free world, pointing to unrest in Europe as evidence that the threat reaches well beyond Israel’s borders.

Boy George kept his own words simpler, and more personal.

“I am here with you, out of love, out of a belief in peace and out of a desire for us to dance, live and celebrate together again,” he said. “I have many Jewish friends who are wonderful people, and I want to tell the world how wonderful they are.

“I felt I had to speak up and tell everyone your story.”

Boy George explained that his support for the Jewish community stretched back to conversations that he has had with his friends throughout the years, and realising how the situation in the Middle East has impacted them.

“For me personally, it really boiled down to conversations with my close Jewish friends in the UK, people I’ve known since I was 15, reconnecting online over this whole thing and realising: what has it got to do with them?” he recalled. “It’s insane that they’re feeling so unsafe, powerless and frightened, and I just felt like I needed to say something.

“I’ve got a lot of beautiful friends, and I feel I can speak about them and tell the world that they’re beautiful people.

“Their appreciation has been really important to me and quite overwhelming, actually.”

It is a sentiment he has voiced before. When pro-Palestinian activists targeted him over his stance, he said he has compassion for Palestinians and does not agree with everything happening in Israel, but will always defend the people he loves.

“I have a lot of Jewish friends and there would never be a situation where I’d turn my back on them,” he said.

To show his solidarity with the Jewish community, Boy George released Od Nirkod (We Will Dance Again).

The song opens with the line “You say genocide, I say war” and runs just under three minutes over a stripped-back reggae groove. In it, he frames Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a defensive response to the Hamas-led October 7 attack, and refers to the Nova festival massacre. He closes by singing the opening lines in Hebrew.

How he released it drew almost as much attention as what it says. He skipped Spotify and Apple Music and posted the track directly to X and Instagram with a single hashtag: #Shalom.

Within hours it had passed 130,000 views, and it has since climbed into the millions. Israeli outlet N12/Mako reported that the track appears to have been produced with AI assistance. Boy George has not publicly confirmed the production method.

The title carries its own weight. It borrows from the rallying cry adopted by Nova survivors and the wider Israeli public since October 7, a phrase that also named a 2024 Paramount+ documentary about the festival attack, which won a News and Documentary Emmy the following year. The Times of Israel reported that Boy George wrote the song after visiting a London exhibition about the festival.

The festival, held near Kibbutz Re’im, was one of the deadliest sites of the October 7, 2023, attacks. Hamas-led terrorists killed 378 people there and abducted dozens more to Gaza. For many survivors, dancing has become a quiet act of defiance, a way of reclaiming joy from the place where it was taken.

For anyone who has followed his career, none of this comes out of nowhere. Culture Club was built on a mix of backgrounds: Boy George, an openly gay Irish-English singer, alongside Mikey Craig, a Black-British bassist, Roy Hay, an English guitarist, and Jon Moss, a Jewish drummer.

In the video for Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, Boy George wore a shirt with Hebrew lettering reading ‘Tarbut Aguda’, roughly ‘culture association’, a small detail that endeared him to Israeli fans early on.

He has performed in Israel several times over the decades, both solo and with the band. In 2020, he collaborated with Israeli musician Asaf Goren on Rainbow in the Dark, which featured English and Hebrew lyrics. In 2024, he was among more than 400 artists and celebrities who signed an open letter supporting Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest.

This year, he stood on the Eurovision stage himself, performing alongside Italian vocalist Senhit as part of San Marino’s entry in Vienna. San Marino did not make the final. He had rejected calls to boycott the contest over Israel’s participation, saying he would never turn his back on his Jewish friends. This year, he also happened to be in Golders Green, London, when two Jewish men were stabbed in an antisemitic attack, and he spoke afterwards about feeling the panic in the air.

The response to We Will Dance Again has been sharply divided. British campaign group Stop the Hate UK called him a champion of “Jewish joy” and thanked him for standing with the community. The official Nova Music Festival Instagram account answered his post with four words: “We will dance again.” Critics, meanwhile, have accused him of denying the scale of Palestinian suffering.

The Times of Israel reported that he has faced condemnation and boycotts for his outspoken support for Israel since the attack. He has previously described receiving threats, feeling professionally isolated and being accused of fascism, and has spoken of how hard it was to find musicians willing to perform with him in Israel.

His schedule for his visit to Israel is built around the Nova community. On November 3, he will hold a press conference at the Nova Festival site. The Times of Israel reported he will visit the site with Nova survivor and former hostage Omer Shem Tov and representatives of the Nova community.

The concerts will follow. On November 4, Boy George performs at Menora Mivtachim Arena, joined by Israeli singer Ivri Lider as special guest. On November 7, he returns to the stage for a concert dedicated to the Nova community and their families, with DJ Ofer Nissim as special guest.

To help fill that second night with the people it is meant for, Adams, the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem and Live Nation Israel have donated 1500 tickets for Nova survivors and bereaved families.

For a performer whose career grew out of nightclubs and dance floors, there is something fitting about the message he has chosen to carry. He is not hedging, and he is not being careful. He has simply come to stand in the room, play the songs, and help people dance again.

#Shalom pic.twitter.com/0BfHIrThzO

— Boy George (@BoyGeorge) July 26, 2026