Keeping the eternal memory of Jake Marlowe in our hearts and minds is a noble use of culture. More should join the club.
Keeping the eternal memory of Jake Marlowe in our hearts and minds is a noble use of culture. More should join the club.
‘H e chose not to run.”
Michael Marlowe recalled the end of his son’s life.
Jake was murdered at the now-infamous Nova music festival in Israel on October 7, 2023. He had been working as security there and became one of 14 British citizens who were killed.
Jake Marlowe was shot nine times.
Speaking at a recent Nova Music Festival Exhibition in London — on what would have been his 29th birthday, on July 9 — Michael shared what he had come to learn about those last moments of his son’s life. Jake, he said, “chose to save people in this four-by-four buggy, and he shepherded countless partygoers to safety; three, four, five times, until he himself saw that they were being overrun by terrorists.”
At that point, he got in a car, but the driver was shot, according to reports, and the car spun out of control. As soon as Jake left the vehicle, he was shot in the chest. As he crawled away in the desert, he was shot another eight times.
Islamic extremists targeting Jews would not have been news to Jake, who appears to have been something of a news junkie. It was actually its spread to Europe — and one incident of a “Convoy for Palestine” terrorizing Jews in northern London in May 2021 with threats of rape and murder: (“F*** the Jews”; “Kill the Jews”; “Rape their daughters”) from megaphones in moving vehicles.
Something was changing. Michael remembers his son declaring: “I don’t like this country anymore, I don’t feel safe in this country anymore, and I don’t see a future in this country anymore.”
And so he went to his roots and moved to northern Israel, a quieter option than Tel Aviv, fitting for who he was — “not a conformist,” his father said at the exhibition. Jake’s mother, Lisa, also on stage, described her son as “living his best life” there. “Cigarettes, beer, Israeli politics, coffee. You name it, he did it.”
Given the continued rise in antisemitism in the United Kingdom, Michael refers to his son as “a visionary.” Since Jake’s death, his father has written about avoiding central London when pro-Palestinian protests are occurring; “I cannot bear to witness them and what they stand for.” He calls them “hate marches”; “These people are supporting the killers of my boy, my son, my future.”
Michael refers to the “scum” who kept shooting his son. Needlessly. Simply because he was a Jew.
“Zionist scum” is predictably one of the responses Boy George got in response to his latest single, “We Will Dance Again.”
It could have been Christmas in July for Generation X ’80s music fans upon news of a Boy George release. Alas, there was “a fierce backlash” instead, according to The Guardian.
You didn’t have to go to any secondary news sources, though. Right on X, where he posted the reggae-sounding song, you could see the anger in real time.
The title of the song was also the backdrop to the testimony from the Marlowes, having become a mantra of resistance and perseverance in the wake of Hamas attacks on the music festival, as well as others, many at home on their kibbutz. The barbarism and additional torture to come were unmistakably on Israel and the Jewish people. And it’s not just in London where we’ve seen even more antisemitism ever since. Although it is certainly plausible that it’s just more out in the open after — a seemingly acceptable form of hate on university campuses and other institutions supposed to be about freedom and truth instead of murderous ideology.
The singer born George Alan O’Dowd, of course, knew what he was getting into.
“You say genocide, I say war. When you’re attacked, that’s what the army’s for. Does it get ugly? You bet it does. When I know you wanna kill every last one of us.”
He’s talking about Jews, but it also came days after an Islamic militant killed a woman and injured others in an attack on a “Pride” parade in Berlin.
Boy George’s manager pulled him offstage for the remainder of his nights as Herod in a London production of Jesus Christ Superstar. In a twist, Boy George is among the innocents whose crime is using his talent — and computer — to use his platform to voice an opinion. One affected by having just met Jake Marlowe’s parents at the Nova exhibition.
While most commentaries focus on characterizing Boy George as a genocide “denier,” he says he’s simply for peace — while also facing facts. It’s Israel the people surrounding them don’t want to exist — with a lot of loud supporters in the West adding to the hostility and fear. The very things that brought Jake to relocate to Israel.
“But if you’re ever confused. I stand with the Jews,” Boy George tells us in “We Will Dance Again.”
“I don’t feel brave, I just need to behave like a human,” are its most powerful words, clearly meant to be a preemptive reality check for his backlashers.
“Creating art to express a feeling is a kind of creative activism,” he wrote days later. It’s not quite as powerful as planting a tree, but it is a powerful frequency. Sadly, in the end, we are all doing nothing. Talk is very cheap.”
“Every day is like survival.” It’s those words of another song, familiar to most of us of a certain age, that take on a new meaning this summer. And the title of the band that made them famous seems to take on an unexpected prophetic nature this summer. Decades after “Karma Chameleon,” Boy George has us looking at what exactly in our culture is killing us: A refusal to hear, listen, and encounter people you disagree with or who have other life experiences as fellow human beings before anything else.
George seemed beside himself for having to defend his solidarity with his Jewish friends. He’s also not backing down. Whether he set out to or not, he’s a freedom-of-speech hero for a moment here. Holding up, also a mirror, to see our need for a revolution of decency. One that will begin by not forgetting the names and faces and stories of people murdered for Jews living freely as Jews.
Never again doesn’t only refer to the Holocaust. It’s every single step along the way, too.
“For the crime of dancing,” our George sings. You condemn the Jews, with selective memory. Musicians holding flags, mouthing like sheep. Propaganda fueled by the Internet feels so weak.”
Because, morally speaking — eternally speaking — in terms of what endures and matters most, it is. The evil is pernicious. And we must say and do something — every time. Lives matter. Remember when such phrasing was trendy? Let’s go with truth. Let’s live for it. Together in unexpected coalitions, all the better.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.