U2 frontman Bono has sharply criticized National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, comparing his rhetoric about Palestinians in Gaza to that of Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany.
The comments came in a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone in which Bono discussed U2’s song The Tears of Things, released this year, and reflected on Jewish history, Israel, the Palestinians and the war in Gaza.
U2’s Bono compares Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric on Palestinians to Himmler
(Photo: Lewis Joly/Invision/AP)
“It’s an attempt to try and grasp what’s going on in a world where we never needed the moral force of Judaism more than now,” Bono said of the song. “And yet, what is happening?”
Bono again condemned Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, describing it as “an unholy offence.”
But he reserved particularly harsh criticism for Ben-Gvir. Rolling Stone said Bono compared the minister’s rhetoric about Gaza to Himmler, referring to rhetoric portraying some people there as undeserving of life and not fully human. The magazine presented the language Bono was referring to as: “They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
The interview does not establish that every word in that passage was a verbatim quotation from Ben-Gvir, and Bono’s comparison is presented as his characterization of the minister’s rhetoric.
“As a person who has stood by Israel,” Bono said, “and standing by Israel — as I stand with the Palestinian people, by the way, that they have a Palestine — there’s all this semantic back and forth over genocide.”
He went on to say that genocide is a legal term whose determination belongs to international courts, before turning again to Ben-Gvir’s place in the Israeli government and Netanyahu’s dependence on his coalition partners.
Bono criticized the fact that Ben-Gvir remains a government minister and argued that Netanyahu depends on him to preserve his parliamentary majority.
The singer then framed his anger in deeply personal terms, pointing to the influence Jewish artists and thinkers have had on his own life.
He said many of the people who had broadened his horizons, changed his thinking, made him laugh, broken his heart through their songs and lifted his spirits were Jewish.
Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric, Bono argued, casts a shadow over Judaism itself.
“It’s just outrageous,” he said.
Bono also said Israel must seek a just compromise with the Palestinians, linking that argument to what he described as the moral foundations of Judaism.
He described The Tears of Things as a song whose restraint conceals intense anger, saying its quietness is rooted in rage.
The comments continue Bono’s increasingly outspoken engagement with Israel and the war in Gaza.
Two days after the October 7 massacre, Bono dedicated U2’s Pride (In the Name of Love) during a concert to the victims of the Nova music festival massacre, changing some of the song’s lyrics and saying the band was singing for “our brothers and sisters.”
Since then, he has continued to condemn Hamas’ attack while also publicly criticizing Netanyahu and his government’s conduct of the war.
His latest comments make that distinction explicit: Bono said he continues to stand with Israel while also supporting Palestinian statehood, but argued that figures such as Ben-Gvir represent a profound moral challenge to the values he associates with Judaism.