In a perfect world, what celebrities say about issues they understand no better than the average person should not matter a whit.
Why should anyone care what someone who acts for a living, dribbles a basketball, or sings on stage says about the Mideast? What special insights do they possess?
We live in one where celebrities are idolized and – thanks to social media – have an enormous bully pulpit. What they say about the issues echoes loudly, and regarding Israel, that echo has, since the October 7 massacre, been overwhelmingly negative.
Want attention? Go to the Emmys and blast Israel. Want to virtue-signal? Repeat the lie that Israel is committing genocide. Want to line up with the “cool” side? Denounce Zionism.
Which is why the song that Boy George, the front man of the 1980s band Culture Club, dropped on X/Twitter on Sunday night was so refreshing. He pushed against the tide with powerful lyrics: “You say genocide, I say war / When you’re attacked, that’s what the army’s for.”
The song continues: “Does it get ugly? You bet it does / When I know you wanna kill / Every last one of us, every last one of us.”
Boy George counters Zohran Mamdani's slander against Israel
Ordinarily, we shouldn’t care what Boy George thinks about geopolitics. But his words resonate not only because they ring true, but because they remind Israelis they are not alone – that there are non-Jews (Boy George was born Irish Catholic) who see us, hear us, and are not taken in by lies repeated ad infinitum, even when amplified by powerful figures such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Boy George could have been singing directly to Mamdani, who accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video of being a war criminal while leveling malicious, slanderous accusations against Israel without once mentioning Hamas or the October 7 massacre.
“You never mention October 7,” Boy George sang. “Young girls raped against trees / Murdered brutally / For the crime of dancing / You condemn the Jews, with selective memory.”
Boy George’s song appeared the same day another celebrity – NBA player Kyle Kuzma – took Mamdani to task on X, writing over a repost of the mayor’s indictment of Netanyahu:
“This is 2026. People cosplaying as things they don’t have the authority, the talent, or the track record to actually be. Just for content. A mayor playing president… Don’t fall for distractions.”
Both men knew there would be blowback, and there was. The mob goes after those it believes have strayed from the “correct” line. But there was also considerable support.
Read some of the coverage of Boy George’s song, and you might think he was universally excoriated on X, where the song garnered millions of clicks. Yes, there were plenty of hostile comments. But there were also thousands of supportive ones.
One stood out: a photo of a Nazi rally where everyone is giving the Heil Hitler salute except for one man standing with his arms folded. “Thank you so much for being this man,” wrote the user.
More of this is needed. More people need to challenge the genocide libel and call it what it is: a vicious lie.
Why does it take a non-Jew to publicly stand with Israel?
Boy George’s message carries particular force because he is not Jewish. In today’s climate, taking this stand requires courage. Those who do are hounded online and pilloried by many of the cultural elites. When a Jew says these things, critics can dismiss them as tribal loyalty. When a non-Jew says them, they are harder to dismiss.
But Boy George’s intervention also exposes something else: Where are the Jewish celebrities? Why are so many silent? Jewish celebrities criticizing Israel are easy to find. Those publicly standing with Israel can almost be counted on two hands: Debra Messing, Jerry Seinfeld, Mayim Bialik, Michael Rapaport, and a few others.
In 1983, in the wake of the First Lebanon War, Bob Dylan sang “Neighborhood Bully,” blasting the world’s hypocrisy toward Israel. Today, he – like so many other Jewish musicians and artists – has fallen silent while the country that is home to half of his co-religionists is falsely accused of genocide and systematically delegitimized.
That it took Boy George to speak out is a reminder of how few of them have done the same.