Ed Sheeran was right to say sorry. But really, what’s he got to do with a Free Palestine?

Another set of repetitive sounds were heard before Sheeran made his statement: chants of “Free Palestine” from local protestors outside. Others chanted “Fuck your concert, f*ck your fans, Palestine is our demand!”

It marked a new low point for a £200m tour that has turned into a debacle since American rapper Macklemore, one of Sheeran’s opening acts, used his slots in New Jersey in early September to say “Free Palestine”, show footage of the destruction in Gaza and perform his 2024 protest song “Hind’s Hall”. He also told Jewish audience members that criticism of Israel was not criticism of them.

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The backlash was swift. The Israeli-American Council called for his removal from future dates, while singer Pink criticised Macklemore’s remarks and his use of war imagery. 

Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots NFL team and its home of Gillette Stadium, where the Sheeran tour is due to land on September 25 and 26, then barred Macklemore from his venue. Tour promoter Messina Touring Group subsequently said that other venues would not host the shows with Macklemore on the bill, and he was dropped from the remaining dates.

Sheeran has since insisted that removing Macklemore was not his decision, but said he wanted his concerts to remain spaces where people could come together. In an Instagram post, Macklemore said that Sheeran had told him the words “Free Palestine” were hurtful to some. In his own statement, which formed the basis for some of what he said in Philadelphia, Sheeran said he was appalled by the conflict, pain and suffering “on both sides”.

And this has made everybody furious with Ed Sheeran.

People on the pro-Palestinian side have accused him of selling out, and his attempt to acknowledge suffering “on both sides” has been treated online not as a bland statement from a man whose principal political objective appears to be getting 90,000 people to sing “Perfect” in unison, but as a declaration of Zionist allegiance. There are memes making puns on his songs, such as “I’m in love with the shape of Netanyahu”, but also cartoons of him blowing up a child with a bazooka gun.

The other support acts – Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham and Finneas (the latter best-known for his work with his sister, Billie Eilish) – have all left the tour in support of Macklemore. So have the Irish folk band Beoga, who had been joining Sheeran onstage for an eight-song segment.

The group released a statement explaining that while “we have been friends with Ed for over 10 years now and will continue to be… to play in venues that silence anyone advocating for a Free Palestine is simply not an option for us.” Shortly after that, Irish radio station Classic Hits Radio removed Sheeran’s discography from the airwaves indefinitely.

Basically, Ed Sheeran has nice-guyed too close to the sun. Prior to this, despite dalliances with the anti-Brexit and pro-Jeremy Corbyn campaigns, his reputation has been largely apolitical.

He made cheesy songs people play at weddings, and though people might groan when one of his hits came on the radio, he was an entirely non-controversial figure. But in trying to appease both sides of a conflict in which both sides insist there IS no other side, he has fucked up spectacularly. The man who has made a virtue of his own ordinariness appears to have chosen the money of billionaires over an artist’s freedom to say what they like.

Since then, Sheeran has made another statement which makes the whole thing considerably more complicated. He has described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic and unjustifiable”, acknowledged the horror of the October 7 attacks, criticised the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and said he was sorry that Macklemore had been put in the position of losing his place on the tour. And he did sound genuinely sorry. 

Pro-Palestine activists are still allowed to be angry that simply saying the words “Free Palestine” can be enough to see someone removed from a tour. It treads dangerously close to punishing someone for political speech. Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan were all, at various points, stopped from performing or broadcasting songs about causes we now look back on as morally right.

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Yet on the other side, Macklemore does have a history of antisemitic behaviour. In 2014, he performed in what appeared to be a stereotypical Jewish disguise, wearing a large prosthetic nose, beard and wig.

I do understand why people, on the Pro-Palestinian side, bristle at the phrase “both sides”, because it feels like a cop-out. But isn’t it slightly strange that Sheeran saying it has now got people claiming he has links to Epstein and blood on his hands?

People always say that all art is political, but is it not more the case that art has to be political now because everyone demands that celebrities have a stance on everything? We are now apparently supposed to curate our music taste based on its implied political affiliations. People on the pro-Palestine side are suddenly claiming to love Macklemore’s music, while people on the pro-Israel side are claiming to love Ed Sheeran.

(Guys, they both make shit music. I don’t know why you’re trying so hard to make this work.)

I’ve long thought that modern celebrity worship is borne out of a decrease in religiosity, and us replacing our idols and saints with living, breathing pop stars and actors. And when those flawed people deviate in any way from the morals we individually ascribe at any given time, they experience excommunication and prompt a mass crisis of faith.

And more importantly, none of this actually helps Palestinians. It is very easy for Westerners to feel morally superior to each other over a conflict happening thousands of miles away. But arguing over whether Ed Sheeran has said the right thing, whether Macklemore has said the wrong thing, or whether either of them is sufficiently pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel does very little to change the material reality of what has happened, and is continuing to happen, in Gaza.

Both have now donated millions to humanitarian relief in the Middle East. Perhaps the most useful thing celebrities can do, in the end, is the least interesting thing to watch them do: use their money and their enormous platforms to direct attention and resources towards people who actually need them, and then get out of the way.

Kurt Vonnegut in 2003 said, “During the Vietnam war, which lasted longer than any war we’ve ever been in – and which we lost – every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”

It’s a depressing truth, but if Ed Sheeran walked on stage next week wearing a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh, it would not stop a bomb falling on Gaza. It might make people feel that they had successfully recruited another celebrity to their side, but that is about it.

But we should ask: how is the demand that Ed Sheeran be held accountable for the actions of his opening act, then a stadium group, and then, bizarrely, the entire Israeli government, really helping anyone? Why are we so obsessed with turning the suffering of others into a referendum on every individual part of our culture, and an opportunity for everyone to show everyone else just how correct their opinions are?

It is a weird tale indeed: two of the arguably cringiest, most basic artists of a generation thrust into becoming Mockingjay-esque figureheads of an intensely complicated geopolitical conflict. And yet, somehow, it feels like the consummate tale of our time.