By Grace Gilson
Bono still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
In an interview timed to the Feb. 18 release of U2’s new EP, “Days of Ash,” the Irish rock star and social justice activist delivered sharp criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while heaping praise on Jewish tradition.
The album — the first collection of original music released by U2 in nine years – features a song memorializing Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, who was killed by an Israeli settler in the West Bank last July, as well as a recitation of the anti-war poem “Wildpeace” by the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
“As with Islamophobia, antisemitism must be countered every time we witness it. The rape, murder and abduction of Israelis on Oct. 7 was evil,” said Bono, 65, a devout Christian. “But self-defense is not defense for the sweeping brutality of Netanyahu’s response, measured but the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.”
Founded in September of 1976 in Dublin, U2 is one of the world’s best-selling acts.
Bono’s criticism of the Israeli leader, along with the EP’s release, comes months after the Irish artist broke his silence on the war in Gaza last August.
On social media, he wrote at that time, “The government of Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu today deserves a categorical and unequivocal condemnation.”
In the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, Bono had struck a different tone, standing out among other artists for paying tribute to the hundreds of “beautiful kids” murdered at the Nova music festival during a performance.
The new, politically charged EP comprises six songs addressing a series of high-profile deaths in recent years, including the killing of Sarina Esmailzadeh by Iranian security forces in 2022 and the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last month.
The Amichai recitation comes immediately before the song memorializing the death of Hathaleen titled “One Life at a Time.”
In a wide-ranging interview about the band’s latest EP accompanying its release, Bono – who was born Paul David Hewson in Dublin — lamented that Judaism was “being slandered by far-right fundamentalists from within its own community.”
“While I’m someone who is a student of, and certainly reveres, the teachings in many of the great faiths,” he said, “I come from the Judeo-Christian tradition and so I feel on safe ground when I suggest there has never been a moment where we needed the moral force of Judaism more than right now, and yet, it has rarely in modern times been under such siege.”
Bono noted that another song on the EP, “The Tears of Things,” takes inspiration from a book of the same title by Richard Rohr, which Bono said made the case that “the greatest of the Jewish prophets found a way to push through their rage and anger at the injustices of the day … until they ended up in tears.”
Critiquing Netanyahu’s military campaign against Hamas since 2023, Bono cited the words of prominent Israeli military historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, who has described the war in Gaza as a “spiritual catastrophe for Judaism itself.”
“As if all Jews are to blame for the actions of Netanyahu, [Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and [Israeli National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir,” said Bono. “It’s insane, but the waters get even muddier when anyone criticizing the lunacy of the far right in Israel is accused of antisemitism themselves.”
Grace Gilson wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish news source.
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