Ed Sheeran’s silence speaks volumes — as pro-Hamas Macklemore takes the flak

Makclemore performing in a keffiyeh in Dublin, Ireland on June 4, 2025. Photo by Kieran Frost/Redferns

Ed Sheeran can’t say he didn’t know.

For the last two years, rapper Macklemore has made radical political activism as central to his public persona as his music.

He’s released songs that falsely accuse Israel of “genocide” and “apartheid,” and that embrace the violent pro-Hamas campus protest movement.

He’s donated concert proceeds to the Hamas-aligned UNRWA, an organization whose employees took part in the Oct. 7 massacre.

Yet Sheeran — the folk-pop singer-songwriter whose bashful demeanor has won him a huge following among both teen girls and their moms — chose to hire the woke rapper as the “special guest” on his national tour.

That means the blame for Macklemore’s anti-Israel rant at MetLife Stadium last weekend isn’t his alone.

Sheeran has demonstrated that he’s perfectly capable of speaking up when his concerts are associated with politics he dislikes.

When he took leftist flak after performing for wounded Israeli soldiers in 2024, Sheeran went out of his way to complain about the “damaging” implication that he had played specifically 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 surprise anyone that Sheeran has remained silent after Macklemore repeatedly stood on his stage, denounced Israel, proclaimed “Free Palestine” and called a federal law-enforcement agency a “terrorist organization.”

I’ve seen the damage of the rapper’s hateful diatribes up close.

In September 2024, Macklemore headlined a festival called “Palestine Will Live Forever” in his native Seattle, where he infamously told the cheering crowd, “Yeah, f–k America.”

The festival was held in Seward Park, in the heart of Washington state’s largest Jewish community, on the Jewish Sabbath — less than a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.

Local synagogues spent tens of thousands of dollars that day for private security.

Jews walking to synagogue were harassed and subjected to anti-Israel abuse; streets surrounding synagogues were closed.

One Jewish family near the park even hired private security because their home displayed American and Israeli flags and Hebrew lettering.

After the guards left, activists swooped in to steal the flags.

The festival was advertised as a fund-raiser for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and UNRWA.

By then the United Nations had already admitted that several UNRWA employees “may have been involved” in the Oct. 7 massacre, and had terminated them.

US investigators have since uncovered evidence that more than 100 UNRWA employees participated in the terror attacks or were affiliated with Hamas.

The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, for its part, has partnered with the Holy Land Foundation — a sham charity that was later shut down by the US government, when five HLF leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas.

Those are the groups Macklemore chose to spotlight in 2024, in the middle of Seattle’s Jewish community on the Sabbath.

“Straight up, say it. I’m not gonna stop you,” Macklemore told the crowd as chants of “F–k America” erupted.

“Yeah, f–k America,” he said again.

The backlash was national: The Seattle Mariners stopped playing Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” at their home games, and he was dropped from the Neon City Festival in Las Vegas.

Seattle’s Kraken hockey franchise and Sounders soccer team, which both counted Macklemore as a minority owner, released a statement 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 wearing a keffiyeh and proclaiming “Free Palestine,” when he performed the inflammatory song “Hind’s Hall” and called Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “terrorist organization,” he was doing what he’s done before.

Macklemore even told the crowd why he wanted 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 respond to repeated requests for comment, even after Macklemore repeated the performance Saturday.

When wounded Israeli soldiers merely attended one of his concerts, Sheeran rushed to distance himself.

But when the opening act he chose uses his stage to spout anti-Israel and anti-American vitriol, Sheeran has nothing to say.

He knows it’s much easier to let a past-his-prime rapper say it from your stage than to face the backlash for saying it yourself.

Ari Hoffman hosts “The Ari Hoffman Show” on Seattle’s Talk Radio 570 KVI and is the Post Millennial’s West Coast editor.