The Culture Club singer has teamed up with an Italian singer, Senhit, to represent San Marino in the contest next month.<\/p>\n
Eurovision has been at the centre of controversy amid growing calls to prevent Israel from performing but bosses ruled in December that the country could compete.<\/p>\n
The move prompted Spain<\/a>, the Netherlands<\/a>, Ireland and Slovenia to withdraw from the competition and countries have struggled to get acts to sign up.<\/p>\n And now Boy George, 64, has broken his silence against critics who have slammed him for taking part.<\/p>\n Speaking ahead of the annual London Eurovision Party on Sunday he said: \u2018I have many, many Jewish friends that I\u2019ve had since I was 15 or 16 years old.<\/p>\n Boy George has hit back at anti-Israel campaigners who have criticised him for taking part in Eurovision after the song competition bosses refused to ban the country from competing<\/p>\n The Culture Club singer has teamed up with an Italian singer, Senhit, (pictured) to represent San Marino in the contest next month<\/p>\n \u2018Are people asking me as a principled human being to turn my back on my Jewish friends? It\u2019s not going to happen, it\u2019s never going to happen.<\/p>\n \u2018From the beginning of my career I wore a Jewish star. Go back and look at pictures of Culture Club. I am so affiliated with Jewish people. I am not necessarily affiliated with Israel. I don\u2019t really have an opinion on that.<\/p>\n \u2018But the job of music is to unite people.\u2019<\/p>\n On Ireland withdrawing from the competition he added: \u2018Ireland is my mother\u2019s home country. I hope they\u2019re not too angry. But if they are, that\u2019s out of my control.\u2019<\/p>\n The 70th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Vienna, Austria following JJ’s victory at the Grand Final in Basel, Switzerland with their song Wasted Love.<\/p>\n It comes as over 1,000 artists from the entertainment industry, including the Karma Chameleon singer, signed an open letter supporting Israel\u2019s continued participation in Eurovision.<\/p>\n It was in response to the international campaigns urging the European Broadcasting Union to bar it from the event.<\/p>\n \u00a0Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: \u2018I have many, many Jewish friends that I\u2019ve 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\u2019s not going to happen, it\u2019s never going to happen’<\/p>\n The letter was organised by Creative Community for Peace a pro-Israel advocacy group and signed by the likes of Dame Helen Mirren, Mila Kunis, Amy Schumer and Selma Blair.<\/p>\n It read: \u2018We believe that unifying events such as singing competitions are crucial to help bridge our cultural divides and unite people of all backgrounds through their shared love of music,\u201d the signatories wrote.<\/p>\n They added that they were \u2018shocked and disappointed\u2019 by calls to boycott Israel \u2018for responding to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.\u2019<\/p>\n The 70th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Vienna, Austria following JJ’s victory at the Grand Final in Basel, Switzerland with their song Wasted Love.<\/p>\n Share or comment on this article:![\"Boy](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/108003863-15746679-image-m-2_1776619599719.jpg\")
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\n Boy George hits back anti-Israel campaigners who have criticised him for taking part in Eurovision<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0Have YOU got a story? Email tips@dailymail.co.uk By DOLLY BUSBY SHOWBIZ CORRESPONDENT Published: 13:33 EDT, 19 April 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[22942,2152,26026,37,27019],"class_list":{"0":"post-73484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-boy-george","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-eurovision","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-tvshowbiz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116433573865108353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}