I first saw Ed Sheeran play in Austin at SXSW in 2012, the year he broke through. He stood a few meters from me on a little platform. He could play the guitar well enough and I walked away without much of an opinion. Fourteen years later I landed in Los Angeles and saw him again, this time projected on the side of a building, giving Robert Kraft a massage.
Robert Kraft worked the phones for a week to keep Palestine off Ed Sheeran’s stage, and it has been a pleasure to watch it backfire. After Finneas quit Sheeran’s stadium tour and wrote that “artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed,” his sister Billie Eilish posted a story to Instagram in white handwriting on a black screen:
Billie took her brother’s sentence and changed “artists” to “we,” which puts the obligation on everyone reading it. Her fans skew young, the same audience Sheeran says he is protecting by keeping politics off his stage, and she spoke to them directly.
Within a day of Sheeran’s statement, every scheduled opening act had left his tour, and so had Beoga, the band that plays with him for part of every show. For years, supporting Palestinians in public could cost an actor a franchise role or an agent, and the safe move for a star was the one Sheeran made: say you’re sad for “both sides” and wait for it to pass. Today, some of the most famous people in music have decided that hiding behind neutrality costs more than telling the truth, and they’re saying so in front of millions of fans.
On September 4 and 5, Macklemore opened for Ed at MetLife Stadium and said Free Palestine in front of 90,000 people. He performed “Hind’s Hall,” named for Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Israeli forces killed in a car in Gaza City in January 2024 while she begged rescuers on the phone to come get her. Ten days later he was off the tour. Macklemore wrote that Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, called Ed personally and rallied the other stadium owners into an ultimatum: keep Macklemore and lose the venues.
Kraft is one of the most devoted Zionists in American sports. He has donated millions of dollars to pro-Israel and Jewish causes and bankrolls the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and he confirmed he barred Macklemore from Gillette. Ed spent the week trying to “build a bridge” with these men. Then he accepted their terms and released a statement, formatted in bullet points, that included this:
I am appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
The suffering and pain caused on both sides is a human tragedy. There are too many wars across the world causing immeasurable pain, none of which should be tolerated.
I have read a lot of cowardly statements about Gaza over the past three years, and this one still managed to offend me more than most. That the first word is “I” is very telling. Then he starts by calling it a conflict. A year ago a UN commission of inquiry found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel has flattened Gaza’s hospitals, universities and mosques, starved its people, and bombed the zones it ordered families to flee to, much of it with American weapons. Palestinians in Gaza have no air force, no navy and no tanks. “Conflict” turns all of that into a fight between two parties, and “both sides” asks us to split the grief down the middle. By Ed’s math, Hind Rajab and the tank crew that fired hundreds of rounds into her family’s car share one human tragedy.
Nobody in those sentences does anything to anyone. The suffering is “caused,” by no one in particular. It is a “tragedy,” the same word we use for a flood or a car crash. Then he pans out to “too many wars across the world,” so Gaza becomes one sad entry on a long list, and he calls the pain “immeasurable.” Palestinians have spent three years measuring it. Gaza’s health ministry has published the names, ages and ID numbers of the dead because the world kept demanding proof of the systematic destruction happening in front of our eyes on our screens. Ed had all of that in front of him and called it immeasurable.
And “none of which should be tolerated” appears in a statement explaining why he tolerated a billionaire censoring his friend for opposing the genocide.
To make matters worse, in 2022 Ed headlined the Concert for Ukraine. The video for “2step,” shot in Kyiv, came out with his message standing with Ukraine, and he gave the royalties to the humanitarian appeal. He released a remix with Antytila, a Ukrainian band whose members were serving in the army. That August he brought them onstage in Warsaw in front of 80,000 people, Ukrainian flag and all. There were children in that crowd.
This week he wrote, “There is a reason I do not use my professional platform for politics,” because his audience includes young people and children. Either he forgot all of it, or he is lying to us, and I don’t believe he forgot.
When he stood with Ukrainians, for a European country, he was loud and proud and nobody in his camp worried that a flag might upset the kids. His rule against politics only shows up when the people under the bombs are Palestinian.
In private, according to Macklemore, Ed told him the words Free Palestine and the sight of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of the people he’d spoken with. Macklemore’s answer was that if those words offend people more than tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, then he and those people stand in very different places. In Ed’s version of events, the flag caused harm and the children simply died.
Then there’s “I am not complicit.” In a statement prompted by a genocide, the first person Ed defends is Ed. He tells us he has private views and supports causes “in my own, personal way,” which is a lot like asking for credit for a donation nobody is allowed to see.
He wants his shows to be “a place of safety and sanctuary.” Gaza has none left. Israel has bombed families sleeping in tents inside zones it declared humanitarian. He also warns that “if we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change,” and I keep coming back to that line. Palestinians hear some version of it every time we raise our voices: calm down, watch your tone, you’re making people uncomfortable. Macklemore said two words and performed a song named for a six-year-old girl Israel killed. The people who got their way this month never had to raise their voices at all, because they own the stadiums.
When Robert Kraft called, Ed Sheeran was holding one of the strongest hands in live music. The Loop tour had grossed nearly $99 million over its first 17 reported shows, every ticket for the stadium dates ahead was sold on his name, and a dark stadium on a night booked for Ed Sheeran earns its owner nothing. Ed could have told Kraft to find another act for Gillette and waited to see how many of the other owners were willing to lose those nights to back him up. He spent the week talking instead, accepted their terms, and then told his fans that removing Macklemore “was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine.” Macklemore’s contract was with the promoter, sure. The phone call went to Ed, and the tour goes on under Ed’s name.
Within hours of Ed’s statement, Aaron Rowe, the Irish singer-songwriter, quit the tour and said the Irish know “genocide, forced famine and violent occupation” too well to let billionaires silence people speaking up against Israel’s genocide. Lukas Graham, the Danish act behind “7 Years,” wrote that “nobody’s bank balance should decide who gets to speak.” Beoga co-wrote “Galway Girl” with Ed and have been his friends for more than a decade. They helped found Irish Artists for Palestine, and they said playing venues that silence people for advocating a free Palestine “is simply not an option for us.” They also reminded everyone that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since the latest so-called ceasefire. Ms. Rachel, whose audience is the small children Ed claims to be protecting, said he “caved to people who refuse to accept what the world knows.”
Every one of these artists said they love Ed, and each of them walked away from a stadium tour, which for most working musicians is the biggest paycheck and the biggest audience they will ever get. Ed could afford to lose a few shows far more easily than any of them, and he wouldn’t risk a single date. Shame on him for folding for oligarchs, for leaving a friend of thirteen years out in the cold, and for letting a billionaire decide what gets said on his own stage.
Macklemore could have kept quiet for ten shows and collected the check. He could have agreed to drop the two words. He refused both, and he opened his statement by saying he is not a victim, Ed is not a victim, Pink is not a victim, because they all get to go home to their families. Hind Rajab’s family was killed in that car with her. Macklemore kept the rest of his statement on Gaza and the West Bank, on Palestinians being starved and displaced and killed while the rest of us argue over which words are allowed.
He was generous to Ed, calling him a friend and said he’d been put in an awful position. He still wouldn’t budge on the basics: criticizing Israel isn’t antisemitic, and opposing a genocide isn’t either.
He spoke at a demonstration for Palestine in Washington in November 2023 and released “Hind’s Hall” the following May, with proceeds pledged to UNRWA. Two years later, in the week he was thrown off the tour, “Hind’s Hall” climbed into the top five on US iTunes, and The Heist, the album that gave us “Thrift Shop,” came back into the top 10 with it. He has said Free Palestine at festivals and arenas for years, and he said it again at MetLife knowing exactly what it might cost him. I haven’t read anything better on this whole affair than his own summary: “I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2.”
Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick have a new book out, Israel’s Lobby, and one of its arguments is that the lobby, unable or unwilling to defend what Israel does, has turned to an antisemitism witch hunt to go after its critics. Kraft’s statement could have come straight out of that playbook. He called a demand for Palestinian freedom antisemitic and used the stadium he owns to shut it out, and according to the promoter, six other NFL stadium owners went along. The same pressure that has cost students their diplomas and politicians their seats landed this month on the opening act at an Ed Sheeran concert, through private calls between a handful of billionaires, and it worked on the biggest touring artist in the world. I don’t think most Americans have taken in what that means for their own right to speak.
The tour picks up again in Philadelphia on September 19, without Beoga and without the artists who walked. Today in Gaza, a damaged residential building housing six families collapsed, killing five Palestinians, including children, and wounding 13. Nearly a year into the so-called ceasefire, and almost three years into its genocide, Israel is still blocking reconstruction materials, mobile homes and durable tents from entering Gaza, so families who survived the bombing are sleeping inside buildings that fall on them.
On Tuesday, an Israeli double-tap strike killed at least two Palestinians, including a child, as people rushed to rescue a wounded man. Striking civilians while they save the wounded is a grave violation of international humanitarian law. Israel has done it again and again during this genocide, and Palestinians keep running toward the wounded.
Macklemore would be the first to say that nothing he lost this month compares to that, and he said as much when he refused to call himself a victim. He still showed everyone watching how a person does the right thing. He said two words he believed in front of 90,000 people, took the loss when the owners came for him, and kept the focus on Gaza the whole time. Within a day, Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham, Finneas and Beoga had walked off the tour, and Billie Eilish was telling millions of young fans that we must speak up for the oppressed.
Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who took heat from the left last year over an Iron Dome vote, now says she’ll change the channel whenever Ed Sheeran comes on the radio. When a congresswoman that careful about Israel is flipping past “Shape of You,” neutrality has stopped working as a hiding place, and a rapper from Seattle reminded us what happens when one person takes the risk, and then the people watching found out they could take it too. Far more is possible than the men who own those stadiums want us to think. Free your mind.
Free Palestine.
From Madonna, to Charlie Puth to Selena Gomez, the list goes on and on. The music industry is full of Zionists. It's just a matter of time until they're exposed, and the masks fall off.
Excellently written! FREE-FREE PALESTINE 🇵🇸 ❤️🖤🤍💚