Okay, so Boy George was huge before I was born. My mom had a poster of him, a t-shirt, saw him live, dressed like him, the whole thing. A certified stan, which is honestly hard to square with the woman who now has Celine Dion on repeat and considers Adele edgy. But my parents also really liked Roger Waters growing up, and Roger Waters, for those who need a refresher, is the 81-year-old Pink Floyd co-founder who has spent his golden years wearing Nazi-style uniforms on stage in Berlin while German police opened a criminal investigation, floating an inflatable pig emblazoned with a Star of David at his concerts, and calling for boycotts of Israel. His bandmate David Gilmour‘s wife, author Polly Samson, called him “Antisemitic to your rotten core” on X, to which Gilmour replied “every word demonstrably true,” and Waters said he was taking legal advice, which is very much the behavior of a man who is definitely not Antisemitic. So yes, some curation of the family music taste was clearly overdue. However, as it turns out, the Boy George stan was onto something. Good one Mom!
Here is the situation: Boy George, 64, former frontman of Culture Club, Karma Chameleon guy, is at Eurovision 2026 representing San Marino alongside Italian singer Senhit on a song called “Superstar” (which btw, totally slaps!). And while basically the whole continent has been losing its mind about whether Israel should even be allowed to compete, Boy George has been out here being an outright mensch about it, consistently, publicly, and without any apparent calculation about how it would play online. Which, in 2026, is genuinely remarkable.
When people piled on him to boycott the contest over Israel’s inclusion, he showed up to the London Eurovision Party and said, plainly: “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.” He also told Sky News he got a personal letter from Roger Waters telling him not to go to Israel, and went anyway. The Roger Waters pipeline claims another victim, apparently, though in this case the victim is Roger Waters.
Then on April 30, the day after the Golders Green terror attack, where a man with a knife went after Jewish pedestrians on the street in broad daylight in one of London’s most Jewish neighborhoods, Boy George posted on X that he had actually been there. He arrived as police were building their presence and wrote that he was already in tears before he even knew what had happened, because he said “you could feel panic in the air.” He called on people to support the Jewish community and wrote that “our Jewish community brings us so much. They are an integral part of the fabric of this city.” A few days later he was in Vienna for rehearsals, and a video circulated of him warmly embracing Israeli contestant Noam Bettan and wishing him luck. OMG iconic? Yes actually.
None of this is quite as random as it might seem, and this is the part of the story that doesn’t make it into most of the coverage. Culture Club, the band Boy George formed in 1981, was always explicitly built around the idea of multiculturalism, and the name was literally suggested by Jewish drummer Jon Moss to reflect the diversity of the lineup: George was Irish and gay, Moss was, as mentioned, Jewish, bassist Mikey Craig was Black with Jamaican heritage, and Roy Hay was English. What most people didn’t know for years is that Boy George and Jon Moss were also in a secret four-year romantic relationship during the height of the band’s fame, one that George has said inspired many of Culture Club’s biggest songs. So when he says Jewish people have been part of his life since he was a teenager, he means it in ways that go considerably deeper than a typical celebrity solidarity post.
It’s very trendy to hate Israel, but I have always said: fashion for the fragile, style for the brave.
The history goes back even further than that. In the “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” video, he wore a shirt reading “Tarbut Aguda” in Hebrew, which translates roughly to Culture Club. He performed in Tel Aviv in 2011 and in 2017, the second time wearing a bright yellow outfit covered in Stars of David, and that night he did a duet with Israeli singer Dana International. In 2020 he released a song with Israeli artist Asaf Goren that features Hebrew lyrics. He signed the Creative Community for Peace open letter alongside Helen Mirren, Amy Schumer, Gene Simmons, and over a thousand others supporting Israel’s right to compete at Eurovision. And when someone on X made noise about it being trendy to hate Israel, he posted a vintage photo of Culture Club from the 80s and wrote: “It’s very trendy to hate Israel, but I have always said: fashion for the fragile, style for the brave.”
I mean. Come on. That’s a line.
Boy George met Israeli Eurovision contestant Noam Bettan and wished him good luck ahead of the competition. ?? ?? pic.twitter.com/qmp0GntI48
— ILTV Israel News (@ILTVNews) May 6, 2026
The Eurovision semifinal where Noam Bettan performs “Michelle” is Tuesday, May 12, on Kan 11. Boy George and Senhit perform for San Marino the same week. In a moment where five countries have pulled out of the contest, fake AI rabbis are spreading Holocaust denial on TikTok, and London’s Jewish community is still shaken from a terror attack, watching a 64-year-old pop legend show up for us, again, without being asked, is a small and genuine light. Mom’s poster was justified. The Celine Dion era, we don’t need to discuss.
