Did Hamas deliberately single out the Tribe of Nova trance music festival, where they massacred at least 260 people and took an unknown number hostage? It wouldn’t be the first time terrorists have struck a music audience – the attack on an Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris’ Bataclan killed 90 people and wounded hundreds in 2015, and in 2001 21 died in a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco.
Media reports said the festival, staged in area of southern Israel about three miles from the Gaza border, was among the first targets of the dawn attackers. The music would have been an obvious draw – the party was still raging a little after 6 a.m., and sound carries over what’s mostly open desert. There are lots of gruesome videos out there for the so-inclined.
U2 was due to perform in Paris the night after the Bataclan attack, and had the Eagles of Death Metal perform with them at the rescheduled concert the next month. The band, in residency at a venue called the Sphere in Las Vegas – site, coincidentally, of one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, at a country music festival – paid tribute to the victims at Re’im.
Before launching into the band’s song about MLK, Bono 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. But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us … and those beautiful kids at that music festival.”
He also altered the lyrics of the last verse 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.
It’s U2 and it’s 2023, so of course the band distributed the tribute on Xitter.
The original appeared on 1984’s “The Unforgettable Fire,” and though it only reached No. 33 in the U.S. as a single, it’s enjoyed a long afterlife on classic rock radio.
