BRENDON O’NEILL: As Bono now knows, you criticize Hamas at your peril.
It is Bono’s comment that is most striking. He lays into Israel, which is what the pitchfork-wavers wanted. But he lays into Hamas, too. ‘The rape, murder and abduction of Israelis at the Nova music festival was evil’, he says. He dares to humanise the youth of Nova. They were ‘music lovers and fans like us’, he says. It feels like sweet moral relief from the anti-Semitic damning of those dancers in the desert as ‘settler-colonialists’ who had it coming. To think of those kids ‘hiding under a stage in Kibbutz Re’im’ is awful, writes Bono. And then they were ‘butchered’ by Hamas, he says, to ‘set a diabolical trap for Israel and to get a war going that might just redraw the map from “the river to the sea”… a gamble Hamas’s leadership were willing to play with the lives of two million Palestinians’.
Now if only Bono would remind the band’s frequent producer, who sounds like he’ll producing Roger Waters and (alas) Eric Clapton next: Lineup announced for Palestine benefit concert at Wembley Arena, helmed by Brian Eno.
Brian Eno is organising a “pro-Palestinian music festival". Yes really. Because those two things go so well together. pic.twitter.com/gvQyY5tBMK
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) August 13, 2025