Published on •Updated
British singer Boy George, frontman of the band Culture Club, has released a song in solidarity with Israel.
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Titled ‘Od Nirkod (We Will Dance Again)’, the reggae-style song has not been made available on streaming platforms and was instead posted on the artist’s X account, along with the caption “Shalom”.
The song’s title is a phrase closely associated with the 7 October Hamas attack on the Supernova Sukkot Gathering festival, which led to the death of 378 people and Israel to launch its military campaign in Gaza. It is also the title of a 2024 documentary about the attack.
The song features the opening lyrics: “You say genocide / I say war / When you’re attacked / That’s what the army is for / Does it get ugly? / You bet it does / When I know you want to kill / Every last one of us…” It openly denies that a genocide is currently underway in Gaza – despite reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations proving otherwise.
A recent report by a UN independent commission has found that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank.” The report cited a conclusion by the commission last year, which stated that “Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip, found that the intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, resulting in unprecedented death, injury and trauma of Palestinian children.”
Other song lyrics include: “Young girls raped against trees / Murdered brutally / You condemn the Jews / With selective memory / Musicians holding flags / Mouthing like sheep / Propaganda fuelled by the internet / Feels so weak.”
The song has been trashed online and the singer of ‘Karma Chameleon’ is facing backlash over the lyrics.
“Don’t you know over 20.000 children have been slaughtered, ethnically cleansed a population into a concentration camp, destroyed over 80% of the infrastructure, destroyed and ethnically cleansed thousands in the West Bank, shame on you,” wrote one X user, while another said: “What a depraved piece of repellant zionist propaganda that’s designed to justify the slaughter of over 80,000 Palestinians, inc. over 20,000 kids, and their continuing oppression, dispossession, humiliation and massacre.”
Another commented: “Awful music, awful person, and he’s sunk to supporting a genocide just to try and be contrary in the hopes it pays off – it won’t. You’re ruined any good faith anyone might have had in you, and you’ve only dug a deeper grave for your dead career.”
Another echoed this sentiment, posting: “He has sold his soul, so disappointed. His Irish freedom fighting relatives would be horrified.”
Check out some of the reactions below:
Many online have also made reference to a 2007 case in which Boy George was sentenced to 15 months in jail for falsely imprisoning a male escort by handcuffing him to a wall and beating him with a metal chain.
Boy George, who was raised in an Irish Catholic household and is not Jewish, has been vocal about his support of Israel.
Earlier this year, he said at a Eurovision event in London: “I have many, many Jewish friends that I’ve had since I was 15 or 16 years old. Are people asking me as a principled human being to turn my back on my Jewish friends? It’s not going to happen, it’s never going to happen.”
Unlike many artists who have called out the genocide and boycotted Israel, Boy George has rejected calls from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to perform in Tel Aviv.
