Bono has never been shy about politics, but this time he picked a fight with a sitting government minister. In a new Rolling Stone cover interview, the U2 frontman compared the rhetoric of Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, about Palestinians in Gaza to the language of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi SS chief. Within a day, Ben-Gvir answered him on X, accusing the singer of hypocrisy and telling him that if he cares so much about Gaza’s residents, he should help them move to Ireland.
What Bono actually said
The remarks come from Rolling Stone’s cover story on U2, published September 28 to launch the band’s new album, Carnaval De Luz, due November 13. The conversation turned to “The Tears of Things,” a track from the band’s surprise February EP Days of Ash, which Rolling Stone described at the time as using Michelangelo’s David as a metaphor for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Bono opened by condemning Hamas’s October 7 attack as “an unholy offense.” He then turned to Ben-Gvir, characterizing the minister’s view of Gaza’s population as “there are people there who are not worthy of life,” and saying that kind of rhetoric mirrors Himmler’s. According to i24NEWS, Bono’s verdict was blunt: “It’s the same rhetoric.”
He framed the criticism as coming from a friend of Israel rather than an opponent. “As a person who has stood by Israel,” he told the magazine, “as I stand with the Palestinian people, by the way, that they have a Palestine.” He said the debate over whether events in Gaza amount to genocide is a legal question the international courts will eventually rule on, but asked how a minister can talk the way Ben-Gvir does without consequences, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps him in government because, in Bono’s paraphrase, “I need him to keep my majority.”
Ynet reported that Bono also described the song as “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,” and quoted him calling Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric “just outrageous.”
Ben-Gvir hits back
The minister did not let it sit. On September 29 he posted a reply on X. The Times of Israel reported that he accused Bono of hypocrisy and declared that “the Jews are done apologizing for their right to live,” before sarcastically suggesting that Palestinians could emigrate to Ireland.
Spanish-language coverage from the EFE wire, carried by Infobae and others, rendered his post more sharply still: a complaint about “the hypocrisy of terrorism’s defenders,” and a charge that Bono had not compared Hamas’s killers to Himmler, only “those who defend Jews.” The different wordings come from translation of the same post, but the substance is consistent across outlets: Ben-Gvir cast Bono as siding with terrorism, and Bono’s defenders will say that is precisely the kind of rhetorical move he was objecting to.
How Bono got here
This is not a new position for Bono, though it is his sharpest yet. Shortly after October 7, 2023, he called the Hamas attack “evil” and paid tribute onstage to the young people murdered at the Nova music festival, as Religion News Service recounted. As the war in Gaza went on, his criticism shifted toward the Israeli government. At the 2025 Ivor Novello Awards he called on Hamas to release the hostages, and on Israel to “be released from Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right fundamentalists that twist your sacred texts.”
When Days of Ash arrived in February, he said Judaism was being “slandered by far-right fundamentalists from within its own community.” Columnists have split over how to read him. Religion News Service’s Jeffrey Salkin argued that Bono’s criticism targets specific politicians rather than Israel or Jewish people as a whole. Invoking a Nazi, however, is a line many people on every side of this conflict regard as off-limits, and the Himmler comparison is certain to be read very differently depending on where you already stand.
What happens next
For U2, the timing is awkward and probably unavoidable. The same Rolling Stone piece carries an update on drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who has had neck surgery that carried a risk of paralysis and is now rehearsing for a stadium tour that has not yet been announced. Carnaval De Luz lands on November 13, so Bono will spend the next six weeks doing interviews, and the Ben-Gvir question will follow him into most of them.
Ben-Gvir, for his part, has built his political career on confrontation, and a public spat with one of the world’s most famous rock stars costs him nothing with his base. Neither man has shown any sign of backing down. Whether you think Bono said what needed saying, or reached for a comparison that should never be made, this row is unlikely to be the last word from either of them.
