What started as a kerfuffle and grew into a foofaraw has now become a major ruckus.
It started when singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran’s U.S. tour was scheduled to play at Gillette Stadium, owned by Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots. Kraft told Sheeran he couldn’t play there unless he dropped Macklemore as an opening act. Kraft, who is Jewish, said the rapper’s outspoken advocacy for Palestinians at a Sept. 4 show in New Jersey constituted “hate speech.”
Kraft has a delicate fee-fee – it apparently requires periodic massage – so, like a lot of people, he considers any statement of support for Palestinians intrinsically anti-Semitic. But he unwittingly triggered the Streisand effect – he’s drawn far more attention to the issue than a few more Macklemore shows could ever do, helping to stoke rather than stifle anti-Israel sentiment.
I get why any heated condemnation of Israel scares Jews. There are a lot of people in MAGAland, plus a lot of Kanye West types, who don’t give a rat’s ass about Palestinians – they just hate Jews, and will take any excuse to do them harm. That’s basically what pop diva Pink, whose mother is Jewish, said in support of Sheeran, and drew plenty of heat herself for her position. (Macklemore, it should be noted, isn’t innocent here. He once appeared on stage dressed as a Jew, complete with a fake nose.)
Sheeran could have told Kraft to stuff it and let Kraft take the blame for the cancellation, but that was never likely – Sheeran played at Kraft’s wedding in 2022. So Sheeran dismissed Macklemore from the tour, but miscalculated the blowback. After Macklemore went public with Kraft’s demand, the rest of Sheeran’s opening acts and his backup band have all quit the tour in solidarity. It’s unclear at the moment whether the show set for Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field this Saturday, or the rest of the tour, will go on.
As Macklemore noted after his dismissal, he’s been advocating for Palestinians and a cease-fire in Gaza since May 2024, when he released “Hind’s Hall.” The title comes from the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University, when students occupied Hamilton Hall and dubbed it Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old killed by Israeli military forces.
You can judge for yourself how effective the song is, but if it prompts people to learn about the child’s horrendous murder by Israeli forces and the Israeli government’s denial of it, the controversy will have served a greater purpose.
