Rapper Macklemore delivered a pro-Palestinian speech while opening for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Friday night, drawing cheers from parts of the crowd and leaving Israeli concertgoers saying the experience felt “like a knife in the heart.”
“I want the people from Gaza to the occupied West Bank to know that we have not forgotten you,” Macklemore told the crowd at the more than 80,000-seat stadium. “I believe that every human being walking this earth deserves the exact same freedom, to know safety and peace before knowing the sounds of violence, and to know the sound of laughter on the playground before planes and bombs.”
Macklemore said he would not allow fear or the desire to keep an audience comfortable to stop him from speaking publicly. “If I let the fear that I have felt stop me from speaking what is on my heart in order to preserve my own comfort and the comfort of the audience, that is the day I no longer need to be onstage,” he said.
He then called to “Free Palestine, free Cuba, Congo, Sudan and Iran,” before attacking U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which he described as a “terrorist organization.”
After the speech, Macklemore performed his anti-Israel protest song “Hind’s Hall,” while images from Gaza and pro-Palestinian demonstrations were shown on screens behind him.
Released in May 2024, the song is named after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli fire during the Gaza war. Pro-Palestinian students who occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University symbolically renamed the building “Hind’s Hall,” and Macklemore later adopted the name for his song about Israel and the U.S. campus protest movement. He said streaming proceeds from the track would be donated to UNRWA.
For Israelis in the audience, however, the political message and the reaction it received from the crowd transformed what they had expected to be a night of entertainment.
“We were 10 people at the concert and we hadn’t checked who the opening act was, and we didn’t know Macklemore beforehand,” New Jersey residents Noya Zuaretz and Gefen Levin, who attended with friends and family, told ynet. “We only found out there and we were in shock. It was really horrifying.”
Ed Sheeran
(Photo: WPA Pool, gettyimages)
“We immediately thought about everything our people have been through and how even when we’re abroad we still have to feel this antisemitism,” they said. “It was even harder because friends of ours were killed in the war and murdered at Nova. It was like a knife in the heart to hear him sing that way and hear people cheering.”
They said the moment brought some members of their group to tears and prompted others to leave before Sheeran began his set.
“We just came to enjoy a concert and ended up feeling humiliated and heartbroken,” they said. “It felt like we were being forced to take part in this antisemitism. We came to enjoy ourselves and simply suffered.”
Macklemore was one of several opening acts before Sheeran, alongside Lukas Graham and BIIRD. His appearance had been announced in advance as an official part of the tour, and he was scheduled to open for Sheeran again at MetLife Stadium on Saturday and at additional dates. As of publication, Sheeran had not publicly commented on Macklemore’s remarks.