Irish rock superstars U2 just released a six-track EP, "Days of Ash," on Wednesday, and one of the tracks is a spoken-word reading of the poem "Wildpeace," by the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
Israel Prize winner Amichai, who died in 2000, is considered by many to have been the greatest modern Israeli poet. The poem, originally published in 1971, is voiced on the U2 EP by Nigerian artist Adeola of Les Amazones d'Afrique, with music by U2 and Jacknife Lee.
This release comes at a time when thousands of cultural figures are calling for boycotts of all things Israeli, including artists. U2, however, was the first and still is one of the only bands to offer compassion for the killing of 378 people and the kidnapping of 44 others at the Supernova Music Festival on October 7, 2023.
The standalone collection is a set of five new songs and the Amichai poem, released ahead of a new U2 album slated for late 2026. On its website, the band describes the EP as “Six postcards from the present … wish we weren't here.”
It goes on to say that “Days of Ash” is “an immediate response to current events” and “inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom,” with several tracks focusing on people who were murdered.
“Wildpeace” includes the lines: “Not the peace of a cease-fire/not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb/but rather as in the heart when the excitement is over/and you can talk only about a great weariness… A peace without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares/without words, without the thud of the heavy rubber stamp:/let it be light, floating, like lazy white foam./… Let it come like wildflowers, suddenly, because the field must have it: wildpeace.”
U2, which has performed in Israel, has a history of weighing in on political issues. In early October 2023, at a show at the Las Vegas Sphere, Bono dedicated the song “Pride (In the Name of Love)” to “those beautiful kids at that music festival.”
The band changed the lyrics to reflect the massacre and offer sympathy to the victims. U2 came under criticism from Roger Waters and other adherents of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for this choice.
In August, U2 released a 20-part Instagram post critiquing Israeli policies. But, unlike most celebrities who have spoken out on the issue, the bandmates had harsh words for Hamas, called for the release of the hostages, and questioned the hypocrisy of those who ignore humanitarian crises all around the world and only voice outrage when Israel is involved.
The song “The Tears of Things” on the EP also includes Jewish references. The band wrote on its website that it “Borrows its title from a book by Franciscan friar Richard Rohr, which examines, through the writings of the Jewish prophets, how one can live compassionately in a time of violence and despair… The song imagines a conversation between Michelangelo's David and his creator… where the young man with the sling and five smooth stones refuses the idea that he has to become Goliath to defeat him...”
The EP has other songs centered on conflicts in the Middle East.
According to U2’s notes, the song “One Life At A Time” was written for Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian father of three who was killed in his village in the West Bank in July 2025.
Awdah was a consultant on the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land made by Palestinians and Israelis. U2 writes, “At his funeral, one of the directors, Basel Adra, spoke of the slaughter of his friend and the experience of Palestinians being erased ‘one life at a time.’”
U2 takes that line and uses it to suggest that a peaceful resolution can also be forged "one life at a time.” Just this week, prosecutors announced that they would file a reckless homicide charge against Hathaleen’s alleged killer, Yinon Levy.
While the vast majority of the politically minded in the entertainment industry have turned their backs on the current Iranian protests and the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, which was sparked in 2022 by the killing by the Iranian regime of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who was arrested for wearing the mandatory hijab improperly, U2 has written a song about this topic.
“Song of the Future” centers on Sarina Esmailzadeh, “one of thousands of Iranian schoolgirls who took to the streets as part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022… Seven days later, Sarina was beaten by the Iranian security forces and died from her injuries, the regime claiming she killed herself. The song aims to capture Sarina's free spirit, the promise and hope of her short life.”
The EP songs also look outside the Middle East to events unfolding around the world. The band writes that the song, “‘American Obituary’… speaks to the shocking event the world witnessed in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7th, 2026 where Renée Nicole Macklin Good, an idealistic mother of three, was shot at almost point-blank range while exercising her right to peacefully protest, a right that is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
The closing track, “Yours Eternally,” features guest vocalists Ukrainian musician-turned-soldier Taras Topolia and Ed Sheeran.
The band describes on the EP how the collaboration came about: “In the spring of 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bono and The Edge traveled to Kyiv to busk in a metro station at the invitation of President Zelensky… Bono, Taras and The Edge met for the first time on that subway platform. They've been friends ever since.” Topolia inspired the song, “written in the form of a letter from a soldier on active duty with a bold, mischievous spirit to match Ukraine's.”
“It’s been a thrill having the four of us back together in the studio over the last year,” said Bono, the band's frontman, on the website.
“The songs on ‘Days of Ash’ are very different in mood and theme to the ones we're going to put on our album later in the year," Bono said. "These EP tracks couldn't wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow, we're working on those now… because for all the awfulness we see normalized daily on our small screens, there's nothing normal about these mad and maddening times and we need to stand up to them before we can go back to having faith in the future. And each other. ‘If you have a chance to hope it's a duty…’ is a line we borrowed from Lea Ypi. A laugh would be nice too."
Bono: Judaism's moral force helped shape Western civilisation
Additionally, in an accompanying question-and-answer fanzine, U2’s frontman Bono wrote, “It’s the moral force of Judaism that helped shape western civilisation,” and celebrated Jewish “mathematicians, scientists, writers, not to mention songwriters”.
He then referred to the Gaza war and doubled down on his past criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies during the war.
“As with Islamophobia, antisemitism must be countered every time we witness it. The rape, murder and abduction of Israelis on 7 October was evil, but self-defence is no defence for the sweeping brutality of Netanyahu’s response," wrote Bono.