'Kneecap Gaza row is met with Songs of Silence by Irish rock's loudest voice'

Irish Daily Mirror

01-05-2025

From her early days managing her rocker husband Ozzy, Sharon Osborne has made her name by riding on the coat tails of other people's talents.
Simon Cowell made her a judge on his reality TV shows where her niche was 'calling it as she saw it' on wannabes with stars in their eyes.
She once labelled Susan Boyle a 'hairy arsehole'. Her favourite response to bad press was to send bags of faeces to journalists. But she's managed to locate a new basement level to her mudslinging barrel.
She is campaigning to stop a group of working-class musicians earning a living by demanding their work visas for the US be revoked.
Sharon was outraged that Belfast rappers Kneecap used their appearance at California's Coachella music festival to call out the Israeli government's genocide in Gaza.
It compromised the 'moral and spiritual integrity' of the festival apparently. Right Ted.
Unlike, say, the moral and spiritual integrity of deporting two million people so you can build beach-front casinos on their children's graves.
Kneecap's brand of 'Children of the Good Friday Agreement' angst may not be everyone's cup of tea. They have clarified they do not support Hamas and Hizbollah, and been forced to apologise for comments seen as provoking violence against Tory MPs.
But when it comes to Gaza they are part of an honourable Irish artistic tradition of speaking out in defence of human rights.
Most Irish bands I've seen play live recently, from the chart-topping Fontaines DC to the legendary Pogues, have expressed similar support for a free Palestine.
We all remember Sinead O'Connor driving her own career off a cliff in the US. And of course there is..eh...U2. Bono felt the wrath of Sharon's tongue himself when she slammed him and the band back in 2014.
For a similar thought crime of speaking up for human rights you ask? Well, no. It was for the atrocity of dropping their album 'Songs of Innocence' uninvited into the inbox of half a billion iTunes users.
"You are business moguls not musicians. You are just a bunch of middle age political groupies. Whose political a** are we going to pull you out of today?' Sharon raged against the machine.
So under all the circumstances you might expect Bono to find common cause with Kneecap and maybe even come to their defence.
In an article to celebrate receiving the US Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden in January he proudly wrote how 'at age 18, we in U2 had our first proper go at activism at an anti-apartheid concert at Trinity College Dublin.'
But I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest the frontman won't use his new status as a holder of the America's highest civilian honour to lobby for Kneecap's right to free speech in the USA.
When it comes to the 21st century heir to the apartheid regime he first rocked against, Bono has opted instead for Songs of Silence.
He has limited his comments to changing the words of U2's pride during a performance at the Las Vegas sphere to: 'Early morning, October 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky… Stars of David, they took your life but they could not take your pride.'
Or to meaningless platitudes like 'it's shocking to see what the children of Abraham are doing to each other. Suffering of Palestinian children after we saw the suffering of the Israeli children. It's almost too much.'
Almost.
In an obscure article to celebrate his medal he did refer to the 'obscene levelling of civilian life' in Gaza, declaring: 'Freedom must come for the Israeli hostages, whose kidnapping by Hamas ignited this latest cataclysm. Freedom must come for the Palestinian people.'
When U2 were kings Bono would have shouted it from the rooftop stages.
He recalled manager Paul McGuinness once asking with exasperation: 'What is it this time, Bono? Rock Against Bad Things?'
Well why not? We now live in an age of very bad things. The baddest is happening daily in Gaza.
Maybe it's time Bono rediscovered his activist pride and started shouting about it with a voice that would carry more weight in America than a little-known rap trio from west Belfast.