Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? Do You Really Want To Make Me Cringe?

[August 10, 2026]

On July 5, 2026, I decided I was done talking about Israel-Palestine discourse in public. I meant it. I had said what I had to say. I had argued, ranted, explained, clarified, yelled into the void, and generally decided that my blood pressure deserved better.

And then Boy George released “We Will Dance Again.”

So, FUCKING HELL, I am breaking my own rule one last time.

Let me make something very clear before I get into this: I am Jewish. I am also perfectly capable of looking at something supposedly made in defense of Jews and saying, “This is terrible. Please stop helping.”

That is exactly what “We Will Dance Again” is.

Boy George released the song in late July 2026, posting it to social media under the Hebrew title עוד נרקוד, “We Will Dance Again.” It is a reggae or pop-reggae track made with generative AI, and its purpose is explicitly political. The song defends Israel's military campaign in Gaza, rejects the characterization of the war as genocide, invokes the October 7 attack on the Nova music festival, and attacks musicians who support Palestine.

And I have several problems with it.

The first is the most obvious one: yes, it is fucking genocide. Israel's response to October 7 has been grotesquely disproportionate to the crime it is supposedly responding to. I am not interested in pretending that these are mutually exclusive propositions. Hamas committed atrocities on October 7. Israel has every right to defend its population. And I can simultaneously believe that the Israeli government's conduct in Gaza has crossed a line into genocide.

Those statements can coexist.

The opening of the song is, “You say genocide, I say war.” Fine. That tells me what Boy George thinks. He's entitled to his opinion, however wrong it is. But then comes, “When you're attacked, that's what the army's for.”

Excuse me?

That's what the army is for?

That's an extraordinarily simplistic and frankly disturbing attitude toward war.

War is not some unfortunate but fundamentally wholesome mechanism that kicks into gear whenever somebody attacks you. War is fucking terrible. People die. Civilians die. Soldiers die. People come home with PTSD. People don't come home at all. Families get destroyed. Entire generations can be traumatized.

My maternal grandfather served in World War II and had PTSD. My half-brother's father was a Vietnam veteran and had PTSD. I grew up with the understanding that war isn't an abstract chessboard where you move little pieces around until the good guys win. War fucks people up.

So no, I don't particularly appreciate hearing “that's what the army's for” presented as though the existence of an army automatically makes whatever the army does morally uncomplicated.

And then we get to the part that makes me want to grab Boy George by the shoulders and yell, “WHO THE FUCK IS ‘US’?”

“You wanna kill every last one of us.”

“We will dance again.”

“I stand with the Jews.”

Who is “us”?

Who is “we”?

Sit your honky ass down, Goy George.

You were born George O'Dowd to Irish Catholic parents in England. You are not Jewish. You practice Nichiren Buddhism and have long been associated with Soka Gakkai International.

You can oppose antisemitism. You can mourn Jewish victims of terrorism. You can support Israel. You can have whatever political opinions you damn well please.

But you do not get to casually slide yourself into the grammatical “we” of Jewish victimhood as though you are speaking from inside the Jewish community.

There is a difference between saying, “I stand with the Jews,” and saying, “they want to kill every last one of us.”

No, sweetie. Not “us.”

You are standing beside us.

That distinction matters.

And then, because apparently this song wasn't already uncomfortable enough, we get the line about “young girls r*ped against trees” and “murdered brutally.”

I did not need that in 2026.

I really, really did not need to hear “girls r*ped brutally” in a happy reggae song.

There is something profoundly fucking jarring about taking one of the most horrifying things imaginable, describing sexual violence against young women, and dropping it into a bouncy reggae track like you're writing a political jingle.

The October 7 attacks were horrifying. Sexual violence was part of the atrocities committed that day, and the Nova festival massacre was a massacre. There is nothing wrong with saying that. There is nothing wrong with remembering the victims. There is nothing wrong with demanding that people not erase October 7 from the conversation.

But this song somehow manages to turn those dead human beings into ammunition in an argument.

And that's what bothers me about “murdered brutally for the crime of dancing.”

No.

They were not murdered because they were dancing.

They were murdered because they were Jews.

That's the fucking point.

They were Jewish civilians attending a music festival in Israel when Hamas terrorists attacked. They were not punished for violating some religious prohibition against dancing. They were murdered because they were there, because they were Israelis, because they were Jews, because they were civilians caught in an attack deliberately aimed at Israeli communities.

And as a Jew, I find it deeply irritating when a non-Jewish person tries to explain Jewish victimhood to me while simultaneously getting the central point wrong.

Then we reach the chorus:

“But if you're ever confused / I stand with the Jews.”

Oh, thank you.

Seriously.

Thank you so fucking much for announcing that you stand with the Jews.

Because apparently what we desperately needed was another non-Jewish celebrity collapsing “Israel,” “the Israeli government,” “Israeli civilians,” and “the Jews” into one giant political blob.

This is exactly the shit that makes me crazy.

Israel does not equal the Jews.

The Israeli government does not equal the Jews.

Benjamin Netanyahu does not equal the Jews.

The IDF does not equal the Jews.

And criticism of any of those things does not automatically constitute hatred of Jews.

Likewise, supporting Israel's right to exist does not automatically constitute support for every action of the Israeli government.

Jews are not a fucking political monolith.

There are Jews who are Zionists. There are Jews who are anti-Zionists. I'm a post-Zionist. There are Jewish people all over the world who have every conceivable opinion about Israel.

So when Boy George sings “I stand with the Jews” immediately after singing about people who “say genocide,” what exactly does he think he is doing?

He appears to think he is defending Jews from people who hate us.

Instead, he is reinforcing the idea that the Jewish position on Israel is whatever position he has decided it is.

That's not solidarity.

That's ventriloquism.

And I've seen this same phenomenon from the other side, too.

This is why I have spent so much time bitching about performative allyship from some people in the pro-Palestinian movement. Macklemore's “Hind's Hall” is a good example of the kind of thing I have criticized. You can have sincere sympathy for Palestinians and still say, “This particular celebrity performance is making a complicated situation about himself and his political identity.”

So I am perfectly willing to apply the exact same standard to my own side.

This is our version.

And it sucks.

There is nothing inherently virtuous about being on the “right” side of a political argument if you behave like an asshole while you're there.

And here's another thing: several Israeli Jews have pointed out that this song is actually triggering for them.

I believe them.

Because October 7 is not an abstract historical event to many Israelis. It is something they lived through. It is something their families lived through. It is something their friends lived through. People died. People were kidnapped. People were sexually assaulted. People watched people they loved get murdered.

The phrase “We Will Dance Again” has meaning because it emerged from that trauma. It is about reclaiming joy after an attack specifically intended to destroy it. But there is a huge difference between Israelis saying “we will dance again” as an expression of survival and a British celebrity turning that trauma into a political reggae anthem about how people who say “genocide” are wrong.

The former is human.

The latter is fucking weird.

And then there is the AI.

I am generally pretty pro-AI as a creative tool. I am not one of those people who believes that the mere presence of generative AI automatically makes a creative work evil, fraudulent, soulless, or artistically worthless.

But holy shit.

This song is bad.

It is legitimately one of the worst songs I have ever heard in my life.

And I am including all the contemporary Christian music that was shoved down my throat in the 1990s.

I am including the Macarena.

I am including Taylor Swift.

The production is generic. The lyrics are clunky. The delivery is bizarre. The whole thing sounds like somebody typed “make me a pro-Israel reggae anthem about October 7” into a machine, listened to the result, shrugged, and said, “Yeah, that'll do.”

And on behalf of AI users everywhere, I would like to say:

Fuck you, Boy George.

You have further tarnished the reputation of a technology that is already routinely judged by its worst examples.

And the funniest part is that Jamaican accents are possibly one of the easiest accents for AI music generators to approximate convincingly. I know this because I have fucking done it. I have made dancehall songs with Suno for shits and giggles. It can do a Jamaican vocal aesthetic remarkably well.

And somehow you still managed to fuck it up.

That's impressive.

This isn't an argument against AI music. It is an argument against being lazy.

AI is a tool. Like every other tool, it can produce brilliant work, mediocre work, and absolute shit depending on what the person using it does with it.

If you use a camera to take a blurry photograph of your own shoe and upload it as fine art, the problem isn't photography.

If you use Photoshop to slap some clip art together and call yourself a graphic designer, the problem isn't Photoshop.

And if you type a political rant into an AI music generator, accept the first mediocre reggae track it spits out, and release it as though you've created some great artistic statement, the problem isn't AI. The problem is that you released a shitty song.

And unfortunately, that shitty song is now being used by people as evidence that AI-generated music itself is inherently shitty.

Thanks for that, George.

So here comes Boy George, presumably trying to be an ally, announcing “I stand with the Jews” while writing a song that treats “the Jews” as a single political constituency.

No.

You don't get to do that.

You don't get to erase Jewish disagreement in the name of defending Jews.

And you certainly don't get to tell Jews that we're confused if we don't agree with you.

That's the part that really pisses me off.

Because I am not confused.

I know exactly what I think.

I think Hamas committed atrocities on October 7.

I think Jewish Israelis were deliberately targeted and murdered.

I think antisemitism is real and fucking dangerous.

I think Jewish victims deserve to be remembered.

I think the people murdered at Nova deserved to live.

I think the sexual violence committed on October 7 deserves to be acknowledged rather than erased.

I also think Israel's response has been catastrophically disproportionate.

I believe the destruction and mass killing in Gaza constitute genocide.

I oppose Netanyahu's government.

I oppose the treatment of Palestinian civilians.

And none of those beliefs makes me an antisemite.

They make me a Jew with opinions.

That's allowed.

And apparently I have to keep saying this louder for people in the back:

ISRAEL DOES NOT EQUAL THE JEWS.

Boy George does not become Jewish by saying he stands with the Jews.

And I do not become antisemitic because I think Boy George made a terrible fucking song.

I've seen performative allyship from the pro-Palestinian side, and I've criticized it.

Now I'm criticizing the version coming from the pro-Israel side.

Because if your solidarity requires you to flatten an entire ethnic and religious group into one political position, you're not actually helping us.

If your defense of Jewish people involves turning Jewish trauma into a weapon in a political argument, you're not actually helping us.

If your song about October 7 makes Israeli Jews say, “This is triggering and I don't want to hear this,” maybe you should fucking listen to them.

And if you're going to use AI to make the song, at least make the goddamn song good.

“We Will Dance Again” did not need to happen.

Not politically.

Not spiritually.

Not musically.

Not aesthetically.

Not at all.

There are already enough people speaking over Jews. There are already enough people telling us what we believe. There are already enough people using our dead as props in arguments that have nothing to do with their actual lives.

We did not need a non-Jewish British Buddhist celebrity singing about “every last one of us” and telling the world that he “stands with the Jews.”

Some of us would really prefer that you stand beside us instead.

​

And maybe, just maybe, stop making us cringe.