Et tu, U2?
The tragic reality is that these good men, along with countless others around the globe, have been subject to a rampant and unrelenting blitz campaign of propaganda and disinformation.
By Marc Erlbaum
JNS
Aug 21, 2026
I have been a fan of the band U2 for nearly four decades. It started in math class of all places—senior Calculus, to be precise. I was a second semester high-school senior, already accepted to college and not particularly interested in my studies to say the least. It was a warm spring day in 1988, and the teacher opened the windows for a cross breeze. I was sitting in the back of the class day-dreaming when I heard a plaintive wail in the distance: “In the name of love, one more in the name of love.”
My girlfriend had tried to turn me on to U2 from the time we started dating the previous summer. I resisted, perhaps because it was clear to me that she had been in love with Bono for years before we met, and there was little I could do to compete. She knew every lyric of the early albums, even the B sides of the 45s, and though she tried to keep herself in check around me, she swayed whenever band member David Howell Evans’s (aka, “The Edge”) guitar started to thrum and swooned when Bono belted his poignant poetry.
That day in math class, I gave in. The song played on a radio far away, but it carried on the wind and broke through my resistance. I bought the album that evening, telling my girlfriend that I fully understood her infatuation with this man and his irresistible sound and spirit. We went to multiple U2 concerts throughout our college years and included some of their songs on every mix-tape we ever made for one another.
It wasn’t just the music: Bono is a poet; he and his bandmates are musical activists; and U2’s songs always stood for something. They were more than a pop band. Their tracks topped the charts, but they had a soul and a conscience and a purpose. While other groups in the 1980s, ’90s and afterwards were writing odes to love or sex or fame and money, U2 was putting out anthems to the human condition.
For all of these reasons, I was heartbroken when I read U2’s recent statement on Israel and the war in Gaza. It wasn’t the first time that an artist I admired had expressed views that were contrary to my own. I’ve written articles in the past defending actors and comics with whom I disagree. Celebrities are mere mortals, like the rest of us, who have opinions and biases, and who are right at times and wrong at others. Some are well-intentioned but misinformed; some are bigoted; and some are merely trying to capitalize on hot-button topics to boost their careers or make themselves relevant.
But reading U2’s declaration, I identified no malice or ulterior motive. I sensed their pain and humble reluctance to get involved in a highly polarizing issue. U2 is not only one of my all-time favorite bands; more importantly, they are men of high character and morality. They are not afraid to buck trends, voice unpopular opinions or speak out against gross injustice. It was Bono himself on Oct. 8, 2023, who dedicated the song “Pride” to “those beautiful kids at that music festival,” altering the words and singing from the stage: “Early morning, October 7, as the sun is rising in the desert sky, Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your pride, in the name of love … .”
U2 (L-R): Larry Mullen, Jr, Adam Clayton, Bono and The Edge
When artists of lesser character declaim a staunch political position, it is easy to dismiss them, particularly when they have exposed their prejudices for some time already. But when those who have shown themselves to be balanced and fair in the past suddenly take a strong stand on a tender issue, it is incumbent on others to pause and take note. What U2’s statement indicates to me, therefore, is that they have carefully considered the circumstances that have been presented to them, and they have come to the conclusion that they have no choice but to speak out.
I cannot begrudge them for doing so. Men of principle, they are standing up against what they genuinely believe to be a heinous injustice. From the information they have gathered, and imagery and commentary to which they have been exposed, they have concluded that it is no longer tolerable to remain silent, and that, as Bono writes, “The Government of Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu today deserves our categorical and unequivocal condemnation.”
The tragic reality is that these good men, along with countless others around the globe, have been subject to a rampant and unrelenting blitz campaign of propaganda and disinformation, which has succeeded in swaying even those of discernment and general objectivity. As many have pointed out in recent weeks, while Israel is winning the military battle against Hamas, it is getting decimated in the public relations battle, losing the hearts and minds of even those who have been sympathetic until recently.
While Israel’s inveterate critics have taken every opportunity to defame the Jewish nation from the minute the war began (and indeed long before), what is more concerning is this recent decision of those who have tried to remain neutral to now join the chorus of Israel’s detractors and fierce critics. U2 is a perfect case in point. For while their home country of Ireland has been among the most vocal and virulent anti-Israel advocates for quite some time already, the band has long resisted the powerful pull of their compatriots to join their crusade against the Jewish state. Yet recent developments have broken the dam, and U2, like millions of others around the world, have been swept up in a flood of anti-Israel opprobrium.
The impetus for this shift is the alleged famine that is starving Gaza’s civilians. Images have circulated of severely malnourished children, and throngs of women and youth with outstretched arms pleading for food. While the blatant deception of the vast majority of these images and clips has since been exposed (see here and here for examples of staged videos and AI-generated photos), the powerful fake imagery has already been digested by millions of viewers who will never see the evidence of their forgery.
While Bono, for his part, recognizes that the war and its resultant suffering in Gaza is attributable, at least in large part, to Hamas, he has bought into the lie that Israel is intentionally attempting to starve the civilian population: “We know Hamas are using starvation as a weapon in the war, but now so, too, is Israel, and I feel revulsion for the moral failure.” Though there is documented proof that tremendous amounts of food relief has been allowed to enter Gaza by the IDF throughout the war, and though the United Nations itself has admitted that the vast majority of aid trucks have been diverted or stolen by Hamas, Bono, along with much of the international community, accuses Israel of perpetrating the war crime of starvation.
As evidence, the musician cites statements by Israeli government ministers “arguing no aid should be let into the territory.” Indeed, there was a period of weeks beginning in early March of this year when Israel halted and blocked aid to the strip. Yet contrary to claims of its genocidal intent, the government cited the theft of delivered aid by Hamas and the terrorist organization’s sale of the stolen food at exorbitant prices to civilians in order to fund its continued war efforts. Furthermore, as Hamas continued to refuse to release the 50 Israeli hostages remaining in captivity, Israel felt that it needed to increase pressure before its hostages were all dead. Aid was one of its last remaining bargaining chips.
Rather than succeeding in bringing Hamas closer to a deal, the blockade has had precisely the opposite effect. More than happy to allow its own people to suffer, Hamas immediately walked away from ceasefire talks, confident that manufactured images of malnourished children would demonize Israel and turn public opinion in their favor. They were right.
Meanwhile, the famine fabrication served to validate the claims of other atrocities that Israel was accused of intentionally committing. If Netanyahu and his accomplices were capable of willingly starving innocent children, then why would we believe their claims of attempting to minimize civilian casualties throughout the past two years of the war? As Bono writes, “the loss of non-combatant life en masse appears so calculated, especially the deaths of children, then ‘evil’ is not a hyperbolic adjective.”
This attribution of “evil” to the Israeli government ignores all the facts of the unprecedented lengths to which the IDF goes to protect civilian lives and avoid collateral damage. As it is widely known, the IDF’s tactics in Gaza have included calling civilians in advance to warn them of impending strikes, dropping leaflets from planes and deploying dummy bombs to “knock” on buildings before live munitions are released. No other army has similarly telegraphed its strikes in order to warn non-combatants to evacuate. Yet inevitably, in a densely populated urban environment, civilians will be caught in the horrors of war. This is, of course, compounded in Gaza, where Hamas a) embeds itself in civilian infrastructure like hospitals, schools and mosques; and b) threatens civilians at gunpoint not to flee the war zone. All of this in order to create higher casualty rates to once again demonize Israel and manipulate international sentiment.
The fact that the civilian to militant casualty rate in Gaza—1.5 to 2 civilians to every Hamas terrorist—is not significantly higher, and is commensurate to the average in urban warfare throughout the past 50 years, is a testament to the IDF’s concern for civilian life. Yet when the viewing public is manipulated by the visceral imagery and the torrent of lies generated by Pallywood and parroted by a gullible (if not complicit) international press, facts are lost to emotions, and even those who have attempted to remain objective are liable to be swept up in the deluge of outrage and indignation.
In response to such global censure and with mounting pressure to end the conflict, Israel has determined to retake full control of Gaza, and destroy Hamas decisively. Concerned about international opinion for decades, Jerusalem has resisted utilizing its full force and capability to defeat Hamas and its allies completely. Yet Oct. 7 was a brutal wake-up call, and the ensuing 22 months have demonstrated that the only thing that will draw approbation from the world is the Jewish state’s surrender or defeat. Such a price is not worth the cheap praise that it will earn.
Pushed to the wall by Iran and its proxies, Israel knew that it was fighting an existential war on multiple fronts and that it needed to go on the offensive. It has since demolished Hezbollah and defanged Iran. What remains to accomplish is the complete eradication of Hamas. While the terrorist organization has been severely weakened, for any chance of peace in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas must be wholly dismantled and incapacitated.
Therefore, with the war dragging on, the hostages still in captivity, and Palestinian civilians continuing to suffer in a war zone, Netanyahu and his government have resolved to take Gaza City. On this decision, Bono writes, “and now Netanyahu announces a military takeover of Gaza City … which most informed commentators understand as a euphemism for the colonization of Gaza.” He furthermore asks: “When did a just war to defend the country turn into an unjust land grab?”
To characterize these military actions as “colonization” and a “land grab” is to ignore the history of the conflict. Israel accepted the partition of the territory in 1948 while it was rejected by the Palestinians. The only expansion of its borders throughout the ensuing decades was a result of wars that the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors initiated against Israel and lost. In order to create buffer zones to protect its citizens from future attacks, Israel maintained control over territories, including Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. Subsequently, in an effort to achieve peace, Israel returned these territories. They withdrew from the Sinai to make peace with Egypt and withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in an attempt to make peace with the Palestinians. Yet immediately, the Gazans elected Hamas to rule the Strip—a terrorist organization that is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and which has sworn that it will never agree to peace.
As opposed to a “land grab” or “colonization,” the decision to take Gaza City is an attempt to finish the war by finally routing out the terrorists who refuse to coexist and thereby end the suffering of all involved. The goal is not and never has been to expand Israel’s borders or occupy a foreign people. It is to ensure the safety of its citizenry and stabilization of the region. Not only has Israel proven itself willing to give land for peace, but it has proven itself more than willing and capable of coexisting with its Muslim cousins. There are as many as 2 million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel proper living with full rights under the law. Many of these Muslim Arabs serve in the IDF, and assert that they have more freedom and opportunity and a greater quality of life in Israel than the vast majority of Muslims elsewhere in the Arab world.
It would be easy to dismiss U2’s statements on Gaza as just another group of artists involving themselves in issues that are beyond their scope and expertise. Indeed, Bono opens his statement by admitting, “I have generally tried to stay out of the politics of the Middle East … this was not humility, more uncertainty in the face of obvious complexity.” But he and his bandmates are not typical celebrities who are concerned primarily with their image and only occasionally with world issues when it benefits their brand. They are true philanthropists and activists who have proven their care and commitment to humanitarian work.
With this statement, therefore, they represent many around the globe who are speaking out against Israel not with any anti-Zionist or antisemitic animus, but with genuine concern and outrage based on the narrative they have been presented. Our response to such admonishment must therefore not be defensiveness or dismissal. We must distinguish between those who are anxious for Israel’s demise and those who are genuinely interested in peace for all peoples. It is not always simple to tell the difference, as there are many wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing who speak the language of liberalism while disguising a much darker agenda of Jew-hatred, Islamism and/or Marxist globalism.
With the latter, no amount of civility, reason or historic context will succeed in breaking through their bias and vitriol. They are the ones fabricating the lies to deceive the public and win them to their cause. But with those, like U2, who have demonstrated their interest in truth and justice, it is incumbent upon us to engage on these issues and address their statements with patience and with the facts. We must understand that they are compelled by their conscience and empathy to speak against what they believe to be atrocities committed against innocents. And we must help them to see through the deceptions that they are being fed and to comprehend that while Israel is certainly not perfect, it is not guilty of the injustices of which it is being accused.
In one of my favorite songs from the “Rattle and Hum” album that debuted in 1988, the year I heard Bono’s voice on the wind and first fell in love with U2, Bono sings: “Don’t believe the devil, I don’t believe his book, but the truth is not the same without the lies he made up.”
The truth is hard to decipher, and the “devil” is silver-tongued, which means his deceit is incredibly devious and convincing. Yet we must expose the lies and thereby help to extract those decent people who have been caught in its sticky web. “I,” Bono sings in conclusion of this verse about the tragic preponderance of dishonesty in our world, “I believe in love.” I believe it, too, and I believe in the power of the truth to prevail on people of genuine character and moral integrity.
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