Bob Geldof has hit out at the “abysmal” starvation of children in Gaza with a plea to Israel.
The comments come 40 years after the Boomtown Rats singer brought the world’s attention to the Ethiopian famine with Live Aid. Now, the Irish singer has turned his sights to the scenes in Gaza. In an article written by Geldof himself published on the Daily Express, he responded to a photograph of one-year-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, emaciated from malnutrition.
“What has happened to the Israeli people?”, his statement began. “Whatever the titanic enormity of your own past and current suffering, what has happened to you that you should allow such suffering, captured in this sickening image, for even one fraction of a second? That you should create and perpetuate the suffering of this tiny little speck of humanity.”
Geldof, who has Jewish heritage and is the Founding Patron of the British Holocaust Museums Aegis Trust for Genocide Studies, continued: “Have you become so inured to the similar images of your own historic horror that you cannot feel or see anything anymore? Has the ‘other’ been so de-humanised, as you once so cruelly were, that a similar madness seizes you now and permits such stomach-churning barbarity, such degradation of a great people by a great people?”
The musician then asked for the Israel to “just… stop. For all our sakes”. “Your government and your army seem to be out of control,” he wrote. “Why do you, the people of Israel, tolerate and permit this?”
He went on to say that it was “simply no longer possible to blame the current rhetoric and actions of your Prime Minister, the policies of your government or the actions of your military on the disgusting, barbarous and murderous events of October 7”, adding: “You are way, way past that now.”
Geldof went on to plea to “feed the children of Gaza and their tormented terrified broken and panicked mothers. Do it tonight before you settle into your unthreatened dinners and the latest Netflix soap and your heavily censored news reports and online feeds.”
He concluded: “How did you get here, guys? How did it ever get to be so base? Shame on you.”
We spoke to Geldof recently about the anniversary of Live Aid and the album release of Just For One Day – The Live Aid Musical.
The album is part of a wider celebration commemorating 40 years of Live Aid, which also includes a special performance and a night of BBC shows.
In his interview with NME, we discussed whether anything could shock people into action in the digital age.
Geldof responded that journalism and writing had the power to do so, but cautioned: “One way or the other, Band Aid has driven something like £50billion towards the poorest people of the world. That’s not possible now. Largely because people are so frightened and exhausted that there isn’t the emotional bandwidth to deal with the terror of Ukraine, the horror of Gaza. How can you draw their attention to what’s happening in Sudan literally right now?”
It echoes previous comments the musician has made about hosting a Live Aid for Palestine, which he explained: “Pop music back then was the spine of society, it defined what we were and where we could go. That’s being supplemented by social media these days so a concert wouldn’t work.”
At the end of 2024, The Boomtown Rats performed alongside JADE, CMAT, Jungle and Queen’s Roger Taylor at Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on New Year’s Eve.
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