'Beautiful kids': U2 pays tribute to 260 victims of Hamas attack at Israel music festival

Rock band U2 have paid tribute to the victims of the devastating Hamas terror attack at the Supernova music festival in Israel, which killed at least 260 of the 3,000 participants. During their Las Vegas show on Sunday, Bono, the band's frontman changed the lyrics of the song ‘Pride’ to honour the victims, calling them “stars of David.” The band shared the touching moment on social media. During the concert, Bono asked the audience to sing along with them and “those beautiful kids at that music festival.”

The singer's emotional speech right before the song touched the audience. He said, “In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence.” The crowd started humming along as the band started performing while Bono noted, “But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed.” During the prelude, the ‘With Or Without You’ singer said, “Let’s sing for our brothers and sisters who themselves were singing for the Supernova Sukkot festival in Israel,” before adding, “We sing for our kind of people, music people, playful experimental people, our kind of people, we sing for them.”

READ MORE: Israel-Hamas war: 260 bodies found at music festival site; death toll crosses 1,100. Latest updates

Bono, rewording the lyrics of the 1984 breakthrough song, which is dedicated to Martin Luther King, began singing, “Early morning, October 7, as the sun is rising in the desert sky, Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your pride, could not take your pride…”

The viral video of the band's tribute to the Israeli victims garnered love and appreciation from netizens as one X user wrote, “I want to hear the entire song. That brought tears.” Another user said, “Pretty much from the start it seemed he could always say the difficult things out loud.”

U2 has a history of changing their song lyrics during concerts to make an impact and pay tributes. In 2009, Bono performed ‘Pride’ at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC with a reworded stanza referencing it to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict - “This is not just an American dream.. also an Irish dream, a European dream, an African dream… an Israeli dream… and also a Palestinian dream.” However, the original lyrics to the song are, “Early morning, April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last, they took your life, they could not take your pride.”

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