Bono has defended his decision to accept the US Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden earlier this year, insisting he took it on behalf of people who do not receive honours such as activists losing their lives in Gaza.
The U2 singer received the highest civilian honour the US has to offer in January, becoming the first Irish recipient since former president Mary Robinson in 2009. It was awarded for his years of activism in trying to combat Aids and poverty.
However, Bono was criticised by some for accepting the award from an administration that was giving military backing to Israel at a time when thousands of Palestinians were being killed.
He on Saturday questioned why anyone would think he was “not shocked and appalled by what is going on in Gaza” and happening to the children living there.
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“It’s such a strange thing, this competitive empathy that’s going around: ‘I feel this wound more than you, and my emergency is more important than your emergency’.”
In an interview with RTÉ’s Brendan O‘Connor show, Bono said he had been an activist for 25 years and was grateful that people had high expectations of him.
“When I was younger I had a lot of rage. Yes. And outrage in some respects was enough to write a certain kind of song. But, as I got older, I demanded more of myself. I looked towards outcomes,” he said.
He said some of the commentary around Mr Biden’s role in arms shipments to Israel was “inaccurate and people just not understanding” the political situation.
The legislative bills on arms supplies for Israel “were bound up with Ukraine’s defence”, he said, and there were attempts to decouple them “but Biden knew he wouldn’t get it through Congress”.
Bono added: “I kind of get the realpolitik of the situation that Joe Biden found himself in ... So no, I took that medal on behalf of all those people who don’t get medals: the activists, the people who are getting killed now in Gaza ... it’s deeply ironic.”
[ Israeli use of Palestinian human shields in Gaza is widespread, detainees sayOpens in new window ]
At the ceremony, he said “I sat beside José Andrés [Spanish chef who founded the Global Food Institute]. And he had lost people he felt who were deliberately targeted [in Gaza]. And yet he was going up to say thank you to the American people for their support of World Central Kitchen ... And he was very emotional about the loss of his people.”
The World Central Kitchen aid convoy attack took place on April 1st, 2024, when Israeli drones targeted a three car convoy belonging to the organisation in the Gaza Strip, killing seven aid workers. The workers had been overseeing the transfer of a shipment of food to a warehouse in the northern Gaza Strip.
Bono spoke of his enormous respect for Mr Biden, who he said he had worked with for 25 years on issues such as increasing aid flows, dropping debt for impoverished countries and improving access to antiretroviral drugs.
“This is a man I have deep respect for and a real relationship with.”
He said he was used to criticism having been “egged and all the rest of it” for standing beside George W Bush as part of his work combating Aids at a time when the Republican US president had ordered the invasion of Iraq.
Bono stressed that the reality is that millions of people are still alive because of funds that the US government put in to the US Emergency Fund for Aids.
U2 reunited in London this week to receive the Fellowship of the Ivor’s Academy award, the institution’s highest honour.
At the ceremony Bono criticised Hamas, Binyamin Netanyahu and “far-right fundamentalists” in Israel.
