Ed Sheeran’s silence on Macklemore rant speaks – Latest News
Ed Sheeran can’t say he didn’t know.
For the final two years, rapper Macklemore has made radical political activism as central to his public persona as his music.
He’s launched songs that falsely accuse Israel of “genocide” and “apartheid,” and that embrace the violent pro-Hamas campus protest motion.
He’s donated live performance proceeds to the Hamas-aligned UNRWA, an group whose workers took half within the Oct. 7 bloodbath.
Yet Sheeran — the folk-pop singer-songwriter whose bashful demeanor has gained him a large following amongst each teen women and their mothers — selected to rent the woke rapper because the “special guest” on his national tour.
That means the blame for Macklemore’s anti-Israel rant at MetLife Stadium final weekend isn’t his alone.
Sheeran has demonstrated that he’s completely succesful of talking up when his live shows are related to politics he dislikes.
When he took leftist flak after performing for wounded Israeli troopers in 2024, Sheeran went out of his solution to complain in regards to the “damaging” implication that he had performed particularly for them.
“A charity . . . sourced tickets to my show in Cyprus last year, which was a large scale public concert,” Sheeran wrote defensively.
“This sort of reporting is [divisive] and damaging, please research before you post things.”
Yet it shouldn’t shock anybody that Sheeran has remained silent after Macklemore repeatedly stood on his stage, denounced Israel, proclaimed “Free Palestine” and known as a federal law-enforcement company a “terrorist organization.”
I’ve seen the injury of the rapper’s hateful diatribes up close.
In September 2024, Macklemore headlined a competition known as “Palestine Will Live Forever” in his native Seattle, the place he infamously informed the cheering crowd, “Yeah, f–k America.”
The competition was held in Seward Park, within the coronary heart of Washington state’s largest Jewish group, on the Jewish Sabbath — much less than a 12 months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 bloodbath.
Local synagogues spent tens of 1000’s of {dollars} that day for personal security.
Ed Sheeran and Macklemore attend the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards on August 25, 2013, on the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Kevin Mazur
Jews strolling to synagogue had been harassed and subjected to anti-Israel abuse; streets surrounding synagogues had been closed.
One Jewish household close to the park even employed non-public security as a result of their home displayed American and Israeli flags and Hebrew lettering.
After the guards left, activists swooped in to steal the flags.
The competition was marketed as a fund-raiser for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and UNRWA.
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By then the United Nations had already admitted that a number of UNRWA workers “may have been involved” within the Oct. 7 bloodbath, and had terminated them.
US investigators have since uncovered proof that more than 100 UNRWA workers participated within the terror assaults or had been affiliated with Hamas.
The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, for its half, has partnered with the Holy Land Foundation — a sham charity that was later shut down by the US authorities, when 5 HLF leaders had been convicted of offering materials help to Hamas.
Those are the teams Macklemore selected to highlight in 2024, within the center of Seattle’s Jewish group on the Sabbath.
“Straight up, say it. I’m not gonna stop you,” Macklemore informed the gang as chants of “F–k America” erupted.
“Yeah, f–k America,” he stated again.
The backlash was national: The Seattle Mariners stopped enjoying Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” at their home video games, and he was dropped from the Neon City Festival in Las Vegas.
Seattle’s Kraken hockey franchise and Sounders soccer staff, which each counted Macklemore as a minority proprietor, launched a assertion decrying his “increasingly divisive comments.”
Yet in September 2025, Sheeran put Macklemore on his 2026 North American stadium tour.
When Macklemore walked onto Sheeran’s MetLife Stadium stage on Friday sporting a keffiyeh and proclaiming “Free Palestine,” when he carried out the inflammatory music “Hind’s Hall” and known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “terrorist organization,” he was doing what he’s accomplished earlier than.
Macklemore even informed the gang why he needed the gig: “The truth is, a big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I can stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine.”
Now Ed Sheeran is silent, refusing to reply to repeated requests for remark, even after Macklemore repeated the efficiency Saturday.
When wounded Israeli troopers merely attended one of his live shows, Sheeran rushed to distance himself.
But when the opening act he selected makes use of his stage to spout anti-Israel and anti-American vitriol, Sheeran has nothing to say.
He is aware of it’s a lot simpler to let a past-his-prime rapper say it out of your stage than to face the backlash for saying it your self.
Ari Hoffman hosts “The Ari Hoffman Show” on Seattle’s Talk Radio 570 KVI and is the Post Millennial’s West Coast editor.
