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U2’s new album includes Yehuda Amichai poem and a song about slain Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen
JTA – U2 frontman Bono delivered sharp criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and lavish praise for Jewish tradition in an interview released on Wednesday, 18 February, alongside the band’s new EP (extended play), Days of Ash.
The album – the first from U2 in years – includes a song memorialising Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen, who was killed by an Israeli settler in the West Bank in July, as well as a recitation of the anti-war poem Wildpeace by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
“As with Islamophobia, antisemitism must be countered every time we witness it. The rape, murder, and abduction of Israelis on 7 October was evil,” Bono said. “But self-defence is not defence for the sweeping brutality of Netanyahu’s response, measured but in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.”
Bono’s criticism of Netanyahu alongside the EP’s release comes months after the Irish artist broke his silence on the war in Gaza in August, writing at the time on social media that “the government of Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu today deserves categorical and unequivocal condemnation”.
In the immediate aftermath of 7 October 2023, Bono struck a different tone, standing out among other artists for paying tribute to the hundreds of “beautiful kids” murdered at the Nova festival during a performance.
The new politically charged EP comprises six songs that address 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 United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent last month.
The Amichai recitation comes immediately before the song memorialising the death of Hathaleen, titled One Life at a Time.
In a wide-ranging interview about the band’s latest EP that accompanied its release, Bono 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, I come from the Judeo-Christian tradition, and so I feel on safe ground when I suggest that 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 titled 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 prosecution of the war in Gaza, Bono then cited the words of prominent Israeli historian 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, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir. It’s insane, but the waters get even muddier when anyone criticising the lunacy of the far-right in Israel is accused of antisemitism themselves,” Bono said.
Ian Levinson
February 20, 2026 at 1:08 pm
As someone who has followed U2 since Boy in 1979, I’ve always admired the band’s ability to weave poetry, faith, and conscience into their music. The inclusion of Yehuda Amichai’s Wildpeace speaks to the enduring moral force of Judaism, which Bono himself acknowledges as urgently needed in our time.
At the same time, I cannot ignore the complexity of memorialising figures like Awdah Hathaleen. As a Jew and a lover of music, I believe art should illuminate grief and injustice without collapsing into one-sided narratives. The tragedy of October 7th and the ongoing suffering in Gaza both demand honesty, but they also demand care not to conflate Jewish identity with political leadership or to slander Judaism itself.
U2 has always challenged power, but their greatest strength lies in affirming human dignity across divides. I welcome their engagement with Jewish poetry and tradition, and I hope their music continues to remind listeners that antisemitism must be confronted just as surely as Islamophobia, and that peace requires clarity as well as compassion.