Vocal activist has muted take on Gaza slaughter

I CAN'T believe the news today.

- 

The opening line a young Bono wrote in the 1980s to U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday.

The words were inspired by the indiscriminate shooting of civilians in Derry by heavily armed troops.

He sang them again last week as U2 collected a lifetime Ivor Novello award.

Bono also used the occasion to belatedly raise his voice on the 600 days of slaughter that have followed from the October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas.

He declared: "Hamas release the hostages, stop the war. Israel be released from Benjamin Netanyahu."

It was a somewhat muted take, coming as it did during the dire hours in which multiple agencies, world leaders and activists were warning that thousands of Gazan children were about to die from forced starvation.

Not even so much as a "tonight thank God it's them instead of you."

But then as Bono later explained to RTE, these things are "complex."

The frontman also lamented the "competitive empathy" of those who think "my emergency is more important than your emergency."