Bono compares Ben Gvir to Nazi SS chief Himmler over comments on Gaza

Irish singer-songwriter Bono compared National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to SS chief Heinrich Himmler in an interview with Rolling Stone yesterday.

In the interview, Bono discussed a new song, described by Rolling Stone as: “Bono’s elliptical take on the thousands of years that led up to Gaza, with an empathetic look at the history of the Jewish people, all narrated simultaneously by the biblical David and the statue Michelangelo made of him.”

“It’s 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,” Bono says, while repudiating the “unholy offense” of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre on Israel.

Bono adds, however, that he is horrified by the far-right Otzma Yehudit leader Ben Gvir’s comments on Gazans — specifically a comment in which the minister said that “there are people there who are not worthy of life” — and compared Ben Gvir to Himmler.

“As a person who has stood by Israel,” Bono goes on, “and standing by Israel — as I stand with the Palestinian people, by the way, that they have a Palestine — there’s all this semantic back and forth over genocide, and it’s a legal term, and the ICC and the ICJ will rule on it eventually. But here’s a guy, a minister in the government, and he’s not being locked up… and this guy Netanyahu says, ‘Well, I need him to keep my majority.’”

Bono adds: “So many of the people that have expanded my mind, changed my consciousness, made me laugh, broken my heart with their songs, lifted my spirits, are Jewish. And this guy’s putting their religion in the shade… It’s just outrageous.”

He urges Israel “to fix the situation. They have to put what happened at the Nakba right, by making some compromise that some of these people don’t wanna make, and do the just thing. Justice is at the heart of Judaism.” (Nakba is the Arabic term for the “catastrophe” surrounding the establishment of Israel and displacement of Palestinians.)

In response, Ben Gvir decries Bono, writing on X: “There is no limit to the hypocrisy of the world’s supporters of terrorism. Bono did not compare the Hamas murderers to Himmler – only those who defend the Jews from the next massacre.”

“I have news for him: the Jews are done apologizing for their right to live. We can do without your sympathy for dead Jews; we prefer to remain alive and face your criticism,” he says.

“If you truly care about the residents of Gaza, help them leave for Ireland. They are begging to emigrate from Gaza. They will have a wonderful future in Ireland,” he says.

There is no limit to the hypocrisy of the world’s supporters of terrorism. Bono did not compare the Hamas murderers to Himmler – only those who defend the Jews from the next massacre.

I have news for him: the Jews are done apologizing for their right to live. We can do without…

— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) September 29, 2026