Opening for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Arena, Macklemore said “Free Palestine,” denouncing genocide and advocating for peace.
On September 4th, 2026, Macklemore used his platform to say, “Free Palestine” at a show at MetLife Arena opening for Ed Sheeran. Showing undeniably horrific footage of Palestinian’s under attack by the Israeli Occupation Forces, he advocated for peace in the face of an ongoing genocide against Palestine under the Israeli apartheid state. Before performing his song “Hind’s Hall,” Macklemore made a powerful statement with thousands of eyes and ears upon him:
“One of the reasons why I wanted to come on this tour was because I wanted to stand up here on stages in stadiums across America and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine. I said, Free Palestine! I want those words to be loud and clear, so that people all the way in Gaza, all the way to the occupied West Bank, know that we have not forgotten them.”
He went on to thank the students who stood up and risked their diplomas, their lives, and what they had to educate and advocate, even saying that they helped change his mind, too. Macklemore gave a specific shoutout to the CUAD students (Columbia University Apartheid Divestment), Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voices for Peace.
Macklemore didn’t stop there, ensuring to address his “Jewish brothers and sisters” in the crowd:
“To my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide, in no way is a criticism of you. My message is for peace, love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. So I say free Palestine. I say free Lebanon, I say free Cuba, I say free Congo, free Sudan, free all people in America living in fear over this terrorist organization ICE. […]
None of us will be free until we’re all free. This song’s called ‘Hind’s Hall.’”
The crowd no doubt reacted; while some cheered with him to support his message of peace, others left the show angry and offended. But his words would go much further than just those in the crowd in the venue that night.
Then Pink got involved.
Singer and songwriter Pink had some choice words in response to Macklemore’s call for peace, many showing some sincere care and attention on the topic while simultaneously proving Macklemore’s point. Among some of her reactions to Macklemore’s statements at MetLife regarding a call to end genocide, she shared calls to have him removed from the tour on her Instagram. From there, things escalated as Pink’s response to the situation became inevitable and unfiltered.
Even still, Pink wasted no time disappointing her fans and disrespecting the people under an ongoing genocidal ethnic cleansing, detracting from her legacy of human rights advocacy.
Her response was jarring and heartbreaking to read, mostly. Pink had reshared a post on Instagram from the StopAntisemitism account, accusing Macklemore of ambushing fans at Sheeran’s concert with “anti-Israel propaganda” and said the artist had “accused Israel of a false ‘genocide.’”
In response to the backlash from the Instagram post, she later responded sincerely in a statement addressing the situation, about being a Jew in this world, and how people have always decided what they believe without asking her, just “because a repost and the word ‘Jew’ were apparently enough to fill in the rest.” Pink said she hasn’t ever spoken for “Israel, or any other government” and asserted that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Pink also said, “Palestinians deserve a future that honors their humanity and their aspirations. Protecting innocent life comes first, everywhere, and nobody should ever celebrate the death of a child. Anybody’s child.”
She went on to make clear the root reason she was upset was that Macklemore’s statement as a Jewish mom, and what scared her about Macklemore’s statement:
“Then last weekend he stood in front of a stadium full of music-loving families, with violent images from a war on the screens, dedicated a song to the movement of his choice, and then took the mic to tell all of the Jews in the stadium that it wasn’t about them. You don’t get to decide that for us.”
Continuing on her statement included that she wasn’t prompted by the words “Free Palestine” or someone’s right to say it. She didn’t insist on silence amongst artists, but without being told she can’t be scared, without being told she’s “somehow cool with a genocide.”
“To the ones who are frightened this week, Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian or Israeli or just tired of all of it: I see you. And if anybody wants to really know what I think, just ask me. I’m right here. I’ve never been hard to find. And I’ll keep speaking out, in my own words.”
While deeply intense and humanizing for her own struggles, Pink’s response still falls extremely harsh and proves Macklemore’s point, being that we cannot equate the violence against Palestinians to Jewish people. Pink is within her rights to fear being lumped into a horrible stereotype, or being held responsible for crimes that are horrifying to witness.
Even still, we cannot let that get in the way of speaking out on what’s happening, with clarity and urgency, while ensuring that everyone in the audience knows this is not about attacking Jewish people nor putting that burden of another’s violence on their shoulders. We cannot prioritize white comfort over what might happen to us over the responsibility to demand that such atrocities never happen to anyone, ever again. We cannot advocate for humanity and then claim offense when someone uses their platform to speak on these issues when it’s too dire not to, even if the truth is complicated and risky to speak about.
Pink, I can empathize with your fears. And it isn’t nearly the point. Palestinian children cannot wait for you to put aside your feelings and lash out at the idea that this is being talked about while lives are at stake.
Pink, we cannot honor Palestinian humanity and aspirations if we’re bombing their schools, hospitals and healthcare systems, neighborhoods, graveyards, religious sites, civilians and infrastructure to nothing. If we are to assume you mean no harm, you would not be offended that Macklemore said criticism of atrocities committed by a nation-state was not criticism of Jewish people, ensuring that the actions of some are not unfairly and violently imposed to be yours.
Nonetheless, the world you advocate for cannot prioritize your desire for comfortable timing to understand the urgency of this issue. Those children sleeping amongst the rubble and carrying their siblings’ bodies in backpacks know who sent the bombs, and they’re people claiming to represent all of Judaism and the Jewish diaspora — . Listen to them. Not the discomfort of your misunderstanding. Genocide anywhere is an attack on humanity everywhere.
We cannot pretend we can put our feelings over the duty and responsibility to act as humanity and intervene to protect, as Pink herself said, “Protecting innocent life comes first, everywhere.”
Does it come first at MetLife Arena, Pink?
Does she want to side with the next person who’d speak out and cost countless people’s jobs? Same man in the Epstein files? Trump supporter and billionaire? Is that the legacy of someone who spent a “decade as a UNICEF ambassador for kids who didn’t choose the country or the war they were born into”?
Would you hold Palestinian kids that listen to Macklemore’s words for hope?
Despite the clear concepts of humanity she’s asking her audience to recognize in herself and others, Pink’s response finds a way to side-step the humanity of an ongoing assault from a government against innocent lives, doing so unfairly and impossibly in the name of the Jewish people who have overwhelmingly decried the violence. The situation for those in far more dire constraints under the oppression of a government’s brutal assault on their humanity needs to be talked about. We need people to stand up, Pink. Even when it’s hard. We can do it in ways that in no way attack Jewish people nor hold them accountable for things they didn’t do or believe in.
That said, we must hold all aggressors accountable and work toward building peace. Never again means never again for anyone, anywhere.
Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace are a family of organizations that organize a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality and dignity for all people. They believe in accountability to Palestinian partners, commitment to Jewish communities, and racial justice & collective liberation. If Pink can extend a hand to UNICEF, and if Ed Sheeran can stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian children, they can connect with organizations like this to affect real change.
The fallout of Macklemore’s comments was near immediate.
Ed Sheeran’s Cowardice
Macklemore’s statement caught the attention of stadium and arena owners across the country, namely the billionaire named in the Epstein files and Gillette Stadium owner, Robert Kraft. This total gem of a human being decided that it’s offensive to say the things Macklemore did, so Netanyahu’s old wrinkly bestie decided to call up Ed’s team and inform them that they would not be performing in his arena if Macklemore were on the lineup, even pressuring other stadium owners to do the same.
That’s when Ed Sheeran’s tail tucked between legs that don’t carry him like they used to before. According to Macklemore’s statement, Ed Sheeran and his team had decided to remove him from The Loop tour. (Which, honestly, disgustingly ironic who’s actually out of the loop here.) Ed would explain later that this was not his decision, in a statement that basically reads like, “Ohhh, I sowwy. It’s easier to side with baby killers and creesps with money.” Two eyes looking each way and he still can’t see what’s right in front of him, fuck this guy.
Siding with the interest of complicity (not to be confused with neutrality or abstaining from conflict), Ed leaned into the “I don’t take sides” thing despite certainly siding with a billionaire listed in the Epstein files that’s been investigated for sex trafficking in the past. He definitely took sides when Ed stood with Ukrainian children, but for some reason Ed decided to sympathize more with Kraft and the ilk, saying to Macklemore that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the flag were “hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with.”
Macklemore reportedly told Ed the truth that people like Pink and Ed should bear in mind:
“If those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood.”
Wasting no time in ensuring that anti-semitism be addressed and an important part in building peace during this rupture, Macklemore continued to highlight a critical component of what keeps the cycle of anti-semitism going in the criticisms surrounding the Israeli state’s war crimes.
“If I kept doing shows, saying “Free Palestine” with Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting lou dand showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that’s why this time it became so important to silence me.
“And one of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that is exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying “Free Palestine” gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn’t protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.”
Everyone on the tour dropped, supporting Macklemore and Palestine.
All openers for Ed Sheeran’s The Loop tour dropped. All of them. Ed’s backing band, Beoga, artists like Finneas, Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe. They stand in solidarity with Macklemore amidst his removal from the tour, not falling for the “but what about jobs” bit that billionaires love to use as a weapon and cautionary tale for those who think about speaking out. But for the masses of fans, civilians, and other musicians who have called out Ed Sheeran for his bullshit, they see right through the Zionist, capitalistic propaganda.
And let’s not forget who Robert Kraft is — y’know, the guy Ed Sheeran picked to please over standing up for Palestine.
Mind you, Robert Kraft is in the Epstein files because he appointed one of Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers to his legal team when charged with prostitution. He’s in the files because he’s a vile capitalistic creep who has no issue with pedophilia and enjoys the riches of exploitation to get away without so much as a slap on the wrist. Of course he’s going to say that freedom from tyranny is offensive, and people like him are banking on you falling for it. (Given Pink’s self-reported history of supporting women and disadvantaged communities, I highly doubt that Pink would want to sit comfortably on the same side of this issue as Robert Kraft, given how inescapably connected these evils are.)
Ed Sheeran’s mild-sauce coworker music is almost as bad as his inability to stand on the right side of history; the owner of Gillette Stadium, Robert Kraft, contacted Ed’s touring company and said they will not be allowed to play if Macklemore took the stage. Ed sided with the money and left Macklemore and millions of genocide victims hanging to make a quick and dirty buck. Unsurprising behavior, given Sheeran’s a nepo baby who got his start with family money to fall back on, but I digress. Neither talent nor spine, and now without Macklemore on the tour, the rest of the shows will likely reek of kiss-assery and spineless Zionist hatred.
But amidst all the celebrity noise, let’s not forget what’s important.
Macklemore’s response to the backlash can be read on his Instagram post, but the priorities and main points remain the same:
It’s not a war if children and families are being slaughtered by the thousands in a territory without a standing army. That’s a genocide.
It’s not a war if the occupying apartheid state forces are committing war crimes.
P!nk can detract from the point with the tired “Hamas” call, and Ed can suck his thumb behind whatever bloodthirsty industry mogul signs his paychecks while he defends and fabricates neutrality.
They can forget what they’ve been seeing before their very eyes in the palms of their hands since October 7th, 2023.
They can forget about the times that Israel’s own defense forces admit to slaughtering civilians seeking aid, on purpose.
They can forget the screams of burning children left to die in the rubble while the IOF was “looking for Hamas” where they knew they weren’t.
They can pretend not to remember January 29th, 2024, when a five-year-old girl and her family were targeted and shot by an Israeli military tank while they tried to escape Gaza City by car.
Pink and Ed Sheeran can conveniently forget that the little girl’s cousin called the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) for help before she was killed by new gunfire, leaving that five-year-old little girl to stay on the phone with emergency workers for nearly three hours, trapped among her family’s corpses.
Ed and Pink can turn their heads and forget about the ambulance that was sent to help that child, and how Israel slaughtered the rescuers on purpose.
Pink can be offended, and Ed Sheeran can stay quiet and complicit. It’s not their burden to remember that her body was recovered 12 days later.
But Macklemore remembers Hind Rajab.
We remember Refaat Alareer and his final poem, “If I Must Die.”
We remember the infants left to die in a Gaza NICU by force of the IOF (Israeli Occupying Force).
We remember the Palestinians murdered by the IOF. We remember the Palestinian journalists who lost their lives for speaking out.
Being anti-genocide is not being anti-semitic. Being Jewish is not a war crime.
Being anti-genocide is not being anti-semitic. In a world where artists need to use their strengths to reach the masses and hold a mirror to society, what the fuck are we even doing if calling for peace is an insult? Is advocating for millions to be free “anti-Jewish” sentiment? Where have we gone wrong if we tune out the Jewish Voices for Peace while we cheer for musicians who sign bombs intended for children and families who have been in their homeland for thousands of years? (Looking at you, David Draiman, you sick fuck.)
The government of Israel is not the “Israel” of ancient scripture. It is a colonial settler violence project, and a nation-state government younger than Dolly Parton and my own grandparents. And there’s a reason why the media has largely glossed over the parts of his speech in which Macklemore details who changed his mind, and what organizers have been doing to educate and combat the onslaught of genocidal violence against Gazans.
What we do on the world’s stages and in our conversations in art and media matter more than ever. We cannot stay silent about a continual genocide. We cannot forget the Nakba and its modern installments of hellish displacement in what Israel itself admits to being part of the expansion of “Greater Israel.” The violence has spread to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and other surrounding countries and territories.
We cannot continue to allow a genocidal capitalist hellscape to be the normal or moral bottom line for those who hold positions of great influence and power. While it’s certain that P!nk’s Jewish heritage has come with a long history of oppression and struggle, the solution has never been to center our reactions or fight against movements to end the bombs blowing off the limbs off of a population half comprised of children under 17 years old, whose only crime was being born.
This is the kind of reality that warrants Macklemore and the rest of the world speaking out for a free Palestine:
Israel’s own Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, has said himself that his goal is to kill 30-40 people in Gaza per night, and that they’re “not worthy of life.”
Nissim Vaturi, member of the Israeli Parliament and Deputy Speaker, has insisted on “wiping Gaza off the face of the Earth,” even in the face of what that would mean if brought to The Hague.
More than 73,000 lives in Gaza have been taken by the Israeli occupying forces since October 7th, 2023 alone, while millions remain displaced and living amongst famine and rubble.
We don’t need to think highly of some ginger-toad-looking billionaire lap dog who can’t handle the burden of advocating for peace while he gladly takes the paycheck for singing stupid music to arenas of people comfortable with his lack of spine in a time of unprecedented documentation and coverage of an undeniable genocide.
We don’t need to cater to backpedaling nonsense from wealthy white male celebrities who still refuse to do anything about their complicity or hypocrisy.
We don’t need to prioritize or center the racist hypocrisies of a wealthy white woman who wants to talk a big game about penning “Dear Mr. President” while siding with Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft, prominently named in the Epstein files.
We absolutely don’t need to categorize Macklemore calling for peace as controversial. We need to be more alarmed that free speech and calls for freedom are being villainized by the same people who own these arenas privately and stand to make even more wealth by building seafront properties on the bones of Palestinians who had every right to advocate for their own lives.
If only the desperately needed aid in Gaza were as immediate and full-speed as the backlash from defensive and out-of-touch pop stars protecting sick and twisted nation-states committing the most horrifying genocide in 4K we’ve ever been able to witness in the palms of our hands, more than any other time in history.
Macklemore donates $1 million to Gaza. Here’s where you can help, too.
According to NBC News, Macklemore is donating $1 million of his earnings to Palestinian relief organizations after he was removed from Ed Sheeran’s tour, and he has invited New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to do the same. He specified that the money was “the entirety of [his] net earnings from Sheeran’s tour” and that it would go to six organizations working to support Palestinians.
Kraft responded with claims that “Sheeran already called [him] and asked [him] to match a $2 million donation.” He did not offer any other additional details nor confirmation of any donations made.
Instead of waiting for a few rich white guys to throw money at whatever they deem a “PR scandal” over a moral duty, here’s how you can get involved with supporting Palestine today:
Donate to the Freedom Flotilla
Learn how to divest your money from the Israeli apartheid state
Be like Ms. Rachel and support the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund
Donate to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees
Send funds to my friend Jamal and his family to find refuge in Egypt
Get involved with Operation Olive Branch to provide aid to Palestinian families
Follow reporting voices on the ground in Gaza like Bisan Owda for firsthand Palestinian accounts and ways to stay engaged
Listen to and support artists that are actively engaged in the movement for a liberated Palestine, such as MUNA, Kehlani, Carsie Blanton, Macklemore, The Weeknd, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Dua Lipa, Ethel Cain, Kneecap, Nemahsis, Saint Levant, Joost, Dana Salah, Elyana, llnur, Amyl and The Sniffers, Robyn, Viagra Boys, Lorde, A Tribe Called Quest, and several more
What actually matters here is the Palestinian people and their liberation.
Macklemore was right about a lot of things, including the ways he has been able to reach the children and people in Gaza. Those kids in Palestine are living among the rubble, listening to his music, sharing the hope of not being forgotten, while a vile Zionist lobby retaliates against those who remind the world that we must not allow its atrocities to continue.
From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, may Palestine be forever free.
Written by Samson Winsor
The post Macklemore, Ed Sheeran, Pink, and Genocide: “Free Palestine” is Center Stage appeared first on ROCK THE PIGEON.