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JUSTICE FOR MACKLEMORE  
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Dave Zirin
September 15, 2026
The Nation
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_ The rapper has been dumped from Ed Sheeran’s tour for saying
“free Palestine.” That’s a disgrace. _

American rapper Macklemore performs live on stage during the
Lollapalooza Paris Festival on July 19, 2025, in Paris, France.,
(Kristy Sparow / Getty Images)

 

Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, friend of Donald
Trump, and proud mega-donor to AIPAC
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just showed us once again how raw oligarchical power can crush any
pretense that our speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Bob Kraft is the person primarily responsible, as he readily admits,
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for compelling international music superstar Ed Sheeran to drop his
opening act, hip-hop artist Macklemore, from his stadium tour.
Macklemore’s crime was saying two simple words at a previous tour
stop to rapturous cheers: “Free Palestine.” Kraft proceeded to
tell Sheeran that if Macklemore stayed on the bill, his sold-out show
at Gillette stadium—where the Patriots play and which Kraft owns
(and for which he received millions in public money)—would be
canceled. When pop musician Pink wrote on her Instagram that
Macklemore’s invocation of “Free Palestine” made her feel
“scared ” as a Jewish person, Kraft stepped in and rallied other
stadium owning billionaires to make the same threat. As a result,
Sheeran threw Macklemore under the bus and removed him from the rest
of his tour.

Macklemore has issued a formal response to all of this—and people
should read the whole statement
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part:

I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim.
We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the
world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to
go home to our families. The victims are the Palestinian people. The
men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and
forced to live through unimaginable violence. People are being killed
today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as
I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.

There is much to unpack here. First, as a Jewish person myself, I’d
like to point out that the true antisemite in this drama is Bob Kraft.
He uses his billions to prop up the idea that Jewishness is synonymous
with supporting the Israeli state and, therefore, that it’s
antisemitic to have any opinion other than the defense of a
78-year-old colonial territory and its total war on the people of
Gaza. That people like Kraft and Pink insist that to be Jewish
definitionally means to be a Zionist, even though there are more
Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews_,_ is
utterly antisemitic. This false equivalence not only whitewashes an
ongoing genocide, it winds up actually fanning the flames of
antisemitism.

This position is also a tremendous slap in the face to the legions of
young anti-Zionist Jews in the United States who are not willing to
check their humanity at the door. A recent _Washington Post _poll
found that 61 percent of American Jews
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believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza and 39 percent say
that the country is committing a genocide. And the youngest
respondents represent the highest percentage of Jews who have simply
had enough. These young people are expressing their disagreement
through organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now and
by saying loudly “not in our name.” All this has only thrown
Netanyahu’s Israel further into the arms of international
fascism—both domestically and abroad—as its minions try to silence
their critics by force. Kraft is a part of that project: a
representative of a minority opinion who is using his economic weight
to silence anyone who challenges it.

For those unfamiliar, Kraft is a true believer in the Zionist project,
from the river to the sea. He was married in Israel to his late wife,
Myra, in 1963. He raises funds for the Israeli Defense Forces through
the organization Friends of the IDF. He has given millions to AIPAC.
He even started an organization, Touchdown for Israel, that gives NFL
players free vacations to see “the holy land,” then encourages
them to come back to spread the word about “the only democracy in
the Middle East.” Suffice it to say, the West Bank and Gaza are not
on the tour. Unsurprising that these tours are organized by Friends of
the IDF.

But Kraft—when not sexually exploiting young immigrant laborers
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or showing up in the Epstein files
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stepped up his defense of Israel once the genocide got underway.
First, he very publicly withdrew his donations to Columbia University
because students had the temerity to protest his treasured war on the
people of Gaza. Then, he started the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism
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dollars on TV ads—including during the Super Bowl at $7 million a
pop—called “Stop Jewish Hate
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These ads traffic in falsehoods by including protests against Israeli
genocide in its tally of instances of “antisemitism,” a common way
to exaggerate the breadth of antisemitism and argue that organizing
for a free Palestine constitutes a hate crime. The real hate, in Kraft
and Pink’s mind, is not the tens of thousands of murdered children.
It’s college students sitting under a tent in the quad. Kraft
bizarrely said on CNN in December
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“Fifty percent of what’s being spread is lies and not accurate,
and young people unfortunately are believing.” So if 50 percent is
true, is his argument that half a genocide is OK?

And what about Macklemore’s longtime friend Ed Sheeran in all of
this? Here is what Macklemore said about what went down:

Ed was in a fucked up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical
stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. He told
me that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the
Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with. I told
him that 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. But he couldn’t get past his public facing, “I don’t take
sides.”And I get why people don’t. Taking a side can cost you.
Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows,
relationships and access. I’ve lost all of those things. But there
is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed. When
one side has the bombs and bottomless financial and military support
from America, refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the
middle.

Macklemore is being kind. Shame on Ed Sheeran for buckling in the face
of oligarchical censorship. Shame on him for turning his back on a
friend. Shame on him as an artist, for not sticking up for artistic
freedom on his tour. Shame on him for thinking he could be neutral,
when neutrality in the face of genocide is complicity.

We owe Macklemore a debt. He could have chosen silence. He could have
agreed to stop calling for a free Palestine on stage. Instead, he
stood firm to the principle that there is nothing antisemitic about
criticizing Israel, and there is nothing antisemitic about opposing
genocide. Macklemore’s choice was a principled one. As he said in
his statement, “I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two
chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that
somehow became too dangerous to say. Free Palestine. But if those
words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to
Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been
on.”

Bob Kraft and Pink believe that their feelings—and their defense of
the indefensible—matter more than the reality on the ground in Gaza.
They believe their feelings matter more than the feelings of
Palestinians who have survived this carnage and are desperate for
solidarity. They believe their feelings matter more than everyone who
has spent the last several years watching a genocide being
livestreamed on their phones.

They are wrong. And the more they insist otherwise, the more they
expose themselves as moral black holes, and the more it feeds the ire
of young people in the United States who are not willing to support
funding the arsenal of this slaughter. They are standing up, even in
the face of billionaires, like Bob Kraft, who are willing to devote
their fortunes to facilitate their repression. The courage of
Palestinian-rights activists is our hope for the future. If only Ed
Sheeran were half as brave.

_Dave Zirin is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of
11 books on the politics of sports. He is the author of a new book,
__The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn_
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_Copyright c 2026 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without__ permission_
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Distributed by__ _PARS International Corp
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_Founded by abolitionists in 1865, __The Nation_
[[link removed]]_ has chronicled the breadth and depth of
political and cultural life, from the debut of the telegraph to the
rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive
voice in American journalism._

* Macklemore
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* Palestine solidarity
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* Ed Sheeran
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* Robert Kraft
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* Oligarchy
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* Free Speech
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