Macklemore opened for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Stadium on Friday night wearing a keffiyeh. By the time he left the stage, footage of Gaza and the occupied West Bank had played behind him, he'd said the words "Free Palestine" to roughly 80,000 people, and he'd performed his 2024 protest song "Hind's Hall." By Saturday, a petition was live asking Ed Sheeran to remove him from the rest of the Loop Tour.
The petition comes from the Israeli-American Council, a group that says it represents more than 150,000 Israeli-Americans. Its language is pointed. "This was an Ed Sheeran concert – not a political rally, not a protest, and not an activist event," it reads, according to Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap, all of whom carried the text. The petition doesn't dispute that Macklemore has a right to his views. It argues a stadium tour isn't the place to air them, and it wants tour leadership to say on record whether the Gaza imagery and the "Hind's Hall" performance were cleared in advance.
Macklemore's own framing, from the stage, was different. He told the crowd he wanted people "all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank" to know they hadn't been forgotten, then talked about his 11-year-old daughter Sloan, who was in the audience, and the fear of not knowing if a goodbye kiss might be the last one. He also invoked Cuba, the Congo, Sudan, Iran and, pointedly, called ICE a terrorist organization, an unusually direct line for an opening slot at a stadium pop show.
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