Apart from the attack on the Nova Music Festival on October 7, which was considered, while the U2 was on stage in the Sphere Las Vegas, I generally tried to stay out of the Middle East policy. This was not humility, more uncertainty in the face of the obvious complexity.
As a co -founder of the One campaign that tackles AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa, I believed that my experience should be on the disasters with this work and this part of the world. The bleeding of human life in Sudan or in Ethiopia hardly makes any news. Sudan alone is about understanding, with a civil war that left 150,000 dead and 2 million people back with famine.
And that was before the reduction of USAID in March and the expansion of Pepper, life -saving programs for the poorest of the arms that were fought for decades to protect … The cuts that will probably lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of children in the next few years.
But but … does such things have no hierarchy.
The pictures of hungry children on the Gaza Strip brought me back to a working trip to a food station in Ethiopia, my wife Ali and I 40 years ago after the U2 took part in the participation in Live Aid from 1985. Another artificial famine.
Observing a exclusive chronic malnutrition would make it personally for every family, especially since this affects the children. Because if the loss of the non -combative life and measure appears so calculated … in particular the death of children, then 'evil' is not a hyperbolic adjective … in the holy text of the Jew, Christ and Muslim, it is an evil that has to be resisted.
The rape, murder and kidnapping of Israelis at the Nova Music Festival was evil.
On this terrible Saturday evening/Sunday morning of October 7, 2023, I did not think about politics. On the stage in the desert in Nevada, I simply couldn't help but express the pain that everyone felt in the room, and it still felt for other music lovers and fans like us – and hid under a stage in Kibbutz Re'im, then slaughter to bring a diabolical trap for Israel, and a war that only went back to the river. The seeds for a global intifada that U2 saw during the Bataclan attack in 2015 at work in Paris … but only if Israel's leader falls in the trap that Hamas set for them.
Yahya Sinwar didn't mind if he lost the fight or even the war if he could destroy Israel as a moral and economic force. In the next few months, the revenge of Israel for the Hamas attack was always more disproportionate and uninterested by the equally innocent civilian life in Gaza. I felt as bad as everyone, but remembered that Hamas had deliberately positioned themselves under civil goals and that the hospital went to the hospital for the hospital for the hospital. I hoped that Israel would return to reason. I made excuses for a people who was fried and shaped by the experience of the Holocaust … the mind that the risk of extermination is not just afraid, but a fact … I read the Charter of Hamas from 1988 again … read an evil!)
But I also understood that Hamas are not the Palestinian people … A people who have been using marginalization, oppression, occupation and the systematic theft of the country, which is rightly belonging to theirs for decades. In view of our own historical experience of oppression and crew, it is no wonder that so many here in Ireland is fighting for justice for justice for the Palestinian people.
We know that Hamas use hunger as a weapon in the war, but now is also Israel and I feel dislike for moral failure. The government of Israel is not the nation of Israel, but the government of Israel, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, deserves our categorical and clear conviction today. There is no justification for the brutality that he and his far right government have inflicted on the Palestinian people … in the Gaza … in West Bank. And not only since October 7th, long before … although the level of corruption and lawlessness that we see now feels like an unknown territory.
Strangely enough, those who are not true demands no access for journalists and seem to be deaf for the informative rhetoric. Examples that sharpen my pen are: Israel's Heritage Minister, in which it is claimed to rush the government to extinguish Gaza strip … his Minister of Defense and Security Minister argue that no help should be admitted to the territory. “No grain wheat.” And now Netanyahu announces a military takeover of Gaza city … which most informed commentators understand as euphemism for the colonization of Gaza. We know the rest of the Gaza Strip … And the west bank comes next. In which century we are?
Isn't the world made with so far right thinking? We know where it ends … World War … Millenarism … Could the world deserve to know where this once promised bright democratic nation is above the way, unless there is of course a dramatic change? Is one oasis of innovation and free rethinking in fundamentalism that is as blunt as a machete? Are Israelis really ready to do Benjamin Netanyahu Israel, which his enemies have not achieved in the past 77 years? And do it disappear from membership in a community of nations that are even based on a faulty decency?
As someone who has long existed on Israel and supported a two-state solution, I would like to clarify anyone who listens to the condemnation of the immoral actions of our band and who have hired an attitude of hostilities on both sides.
If not Irish voices, please stop and listen to Jewish voices -from the high opinion of Rabbi Sharon Brous to the tearful comedy of the Grody -Patinkin family -that fear the damage to Judaism and Israel's neighbors. Listen to the more than 100,000 Israelis that protested this week for an end to the war.
Our band is in solidarity with the people in Palestine who really seek a way to peace and coexistence with Israel and their lawful and legitimate demands for statehood. We are in solidarity with the remaining hostages and advocate that someone who negotiates rational rational negotiations negotiates their release. Could it be Marwan Barghouthi who described the former head of Mossad Efraim Halevy as “probably the most reasonable and qualified person” to lead the Palestinians?
Smart heads than mine will have a look, but the hostages will certainly earn a different approach – and quickly.
We ask for more good people in Israel to request unrestricted access from experts in order to provide the intensive care required in Gaza and in West Bank, which you can best know how to distribute yourself … and to enforce the right number of trucks. It will need more than 100 trucks a day to take the need seriously – rather 600 -, but the flooding of humanitarian aid will also undermine black marketing that Hamas benefits.
The band is obliged to contribute our support from donations for medical help for Palestinians.