Short answer: As of July 2026, Bono's record on Israel is mixed and has shifted over time, not a simple "supports" or "opposes." He condemned the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack by name during U2 concerts and has a decades-long personal warmth toward Israeli statesman Shimon Peres, but since 2025 he and his U2 bandmates have issued sharp public criticism of the Israeli government's conduct of the Gaza war and of Prime Minister Netanyahu, while still condemning Hamas.
What Bono has actually said and done
- September 30, 1997: U2 played its only-ever Israel concert, at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv, as part of the PopMart Tour.
- June 2013: For Shimon Peres's 90th birthday celebration, Bono recorded a video greeting calling him "a gift to Israel and to the world." That July, U2 dedicated the song "One" to Peres from the stage in Toronto when the Israeli president was in the audience, as Times of Israel reported.
- October 9, 2023: At a U2 concert at the Sphere in Las Vegas, two days after the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival, Bono dedicated "Pride (In the Name of Love)" to the victims, changing the lyrics to reference "October 7th" and "Stars of David." Both CNN and Variety covered the moment.
- October 2023: Pink Floyd's Roger Waters publicly attacked Bono over that tribute, calling him "disgusting" and, per The Jerusalem Post and Guitar.com, saying people should "pick him up by his ankles and shake him" for "sticking up for the Zionist entity."
- May 23, 2025: Accepting an award at London's Ivor Novello Awards, Bono said, "Hamas, release the hostages, stop the war. Israel, be released from Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right fundamentalists that twist your sacred texts," and called on all sides to protect aid workers, according to the Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel.
- August 11, 2025: Bono and his three U2 bandmates each released individual statements on the Gaza war. Bono called Hamas's October 7 attack "evil" while also saying, "we know Hamas are using starvation as a weapon...but now so too is Israel, and I feel revulsion for the moral failure," citing Rabbi Sharon Brous and Mandy Patinkin, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Times of Israel.
Bono's Jewish connections: culture, not ancestry
Bono has no confirmed Jewish ancestry. In U2's authorized biography, he says he once heard a family rumor that his mother's side "might have been Jewish," but by his own account it was never substantiated, and his mother was a practicing Church of Ireland Protestant. What Bono does have is a deep, openly stated debt to Jewish artists and writers: he has repeatedly credited Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Lou Reed, along with the Jewish poet Paul Celan, as major influences on his songwriting, and he has spoken about drawing on Hebrew scripture, particularly the Psalms and the prophets, in his own faith and lyrics. So his tie to Jewish identity runs through music and literature, not heritage or religion.
The bottom line
Bono is not a straightforward Israel supporter or opponent. He has shown genuine warmth toward Israel and Israelis, from the Peres tributes to the October 7 concert dedication to U2's 1997 Tel Aviv show, and he has consistently condemned Hamas and called for hostage releases. But since 2025 he has also directly and sharply criticized the Netanyahu government's conduct of the Gaza war. His position is best described as a peace advocate's: anti-Hamas throughout, warm toward Israeli civilians and statesmen, and increasingly critical of the Israeli government specifically as the war extended into 2025 and 2026.
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Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
