The members of U2—Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr.—have each released their own individual statements on Israel’s ongoing starvation of the Gaza Strip. The statements were shared on the band’s Instagram and website, alongside the following joint message: “Everyone has long been horrified by what is unfolding in Gaza—but the blocking of humanitarian aid and now plans for a military takeover of Gaza City has taken the conflict into uncharted territory. We are not experts in the politics of the region, but we want our audience to know where we each stand.”
Bono began his statement by reflecting on reflecting on the October 7, 2023, attacks against Israel by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that governs the Gaza Strip. He discussed the work of his ONE organization, which combats HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, before acknowledging that “there is no hierarchy to such things.” “[W]hen the loss of non-combatant life en masse appears so calculated… especially the deaths of children, then ‘evil’ is not a hyperbolic adjective,” he wrote. “[I]n the sacred text of Jew, Christian, and Muslim it is an evil that must be resisted.”https://pitchfork.com/news/u2-release-statements-on-israel-and-gaza/
Bono went on to condemn former Hamas chairman Yahya Sinwar and call the October 7 attacks “a diabolical trap for Israel and to get a war going that might just redraw the map from ‘The river to the sea.’” He drew parallels to the 2015 terrorist attack at Paris’ Bataclan theater. “But I also understood that Hamas are not the Palestinian people,” he added, “a people who have for decades endured and continue to endure marginalization, oppression, occupation, and the systematic stealing of the land that is rightfully theirs.”