Roger Waters, a loud and consistent critic of Israel, has thoughts on Bono’s salute to the victims of the October 7 attack on the Supernova music festival by Hamas.
Waters describes Bono’s tribute, which took place during one of U2’s residency shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas, as “disgusting” while labeling Bono “an enormous shit.”
The comments that incensed Pink Floyd’s former mastermind arrived before U2 launched into “Pride (In the Name of Love)” back in October. “In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence,” Bono told the crowd. “But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us … and those beautiful kids at that music festival.”
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The band then played an updated version of their Top 5 1984 hit, changing a lyric that once focused on the day that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated: “Early morning, Oct. 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky … Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride.”
Months later, Waters remains angered. “Anybody who knows Bono should go and pick him up by his ankles and shake him … until he stops being an enormous shit,” Waters tells Al Jazeera, the Qatar-funded news outlet based in the Middle East.
“We have to start saying to these people, your opinion is so disgusting and so degrading … sticking up for the Zionist entity,” Waters added. “What he did a couple of weeks ago in the Sphere in Las Vegas, singing about the Stars of David, was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
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Waters also seemed to imply that people like Bono simply hadn’t done enough research on the matter. “My mother told me, when faced with difficult problems, the first thing to do is to read — read, read, read,” Waters said. “Then, the next part is easy: Do the right thing.”
Meanwhile, he’s been the subject of a new documentary titled The Dark Side of Roger Waters, produced by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Waters says his criticism is aimed at Israel, rather than Judaism, and has accused critics of “abusing the term ‘anti-Semitism’ to intimidate people like me into silence.”
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